Rockwell sees brighter future

Rockwell Diamonds levelled accusations of “malicious legal attacks” and “tampering” of equipment at third parties, blaming its poor thirdquarter performance on these factors as new CEO Tjaart Willemse painted a brighter outlook for the company. Rockwell has had a bruising battle with a contractor.

Rockwell Diamonds accused third parties of “malicious legal attacks” and equipment “tampering”, blaming its poor thirdquarter performance on these factors as new CEO Tjaart Willemse painted a brighter outlook for the company.

Rockwell, which is under new executive leadership, has agreed to sell its Saxendrift and Remhoogte/Holsloot assets to Nelesco 318 for R45.5m, reduce its workforce by more than half, cut its liabilities by more than 80% and inject $8m into the company to bring its Wouterspan mine and plant in the Northern Cape into production from March this year.

Rockwell has had a bruising battle with a contractor at its operations in Middle Orange River, near Prieska. The tensions boiled over when the contractor filed legal documents to seize Rockwell’s mining fleet and put the company and its subsidiaries into liquidation.

Rockwell has won back the machinery and is contesting the liquidation applications.

Willemse was blunt about where he saw the problems for the November quarter’s poor performance. Diamond sales fell to C$2.4m compared with C$6.9m in the previous year but its loss narrowed to C$5.5m from a C$9.3m loss before.

Willemse said once Rockwell’s employees had restarted mining at Wouterspan after defeating the spoliation order in court, they were unable to ramp up production as quickly as they had hoped to do.

“On restarting the operations production, ramp-up has been slower than anticipated, mostly as a result of unexpected challenges with earth-moving equipment after it was found to have been tampered [with after] the interim spoliation ruling in favour of the contractor. Not all challenges have been overcome yet, but [are] receiving due attention,” former De Beers employee Willemse said.

Rockwell had documented the damage to its mining fleet and would take legal action, he said. The miner would complete the unfinished plan with staff it employed after they had been retrenched by the contractor and would conduct its own mining of the alluvial deposit.

“The company was taken back from being effectively operated by third parties and is now managed by its management – the way it should be,” Willemse said.

Wouterspan will run at 200,000 cubic metres a month, while the new Stofdraai mine will add another 60,000 cubic metres of ore a month. Rockwell wants to achieve 500,000 cubic metres a month, he said.