MRI banks on angel investor
Mine Restoration Investments (MRI) hopes negotiations with an angel investor will allow the company to invest in the iron beneficiation project it has been pursuing for the past few years, according to its CEO.
Mine Restoration Investments (MRI) hopes negotiations with an angel investor will allow the company to invest in the iron beneficiation project it has been pursuing for the past few years, according to CEO Richard Tait.
If not, MRI will have to enter voluntary liquidation.
MRI’s shares were voluntarily suspended seven months ago as management warned there was uncertainty over its status as a going concern, which also made it impossible to publish audited financial figures for the year to February 2016.
MRI’s major shareholders at the time were AIM-listed Armadale Capital; Stellar Capital, an investment company in which retail tycoon Christo Wiese is a major investor; Capital International, which manages some of the former Trinity Asset Management client portfolios; and the AfrAsia Special Opportunities Fund.
In the past few months Stellar Capital has sold its 18.8% shareholding in and R4m loan to MRI to a private asset management company, Growth Equity, headed by Jeremy Woods. Growth Equity was backing MRI because it had faith in the iron beneficiation project, Tait said.
MRI’s first two ventures after listing, into acid mine drainage technology and coal briquette making, had to be abandoned for various reasons.
For the past two years, MRI has been attempting to raise finance for a third project, the Iron Mineral Beneficiation Services venture in Phalaborwa.
The venture is developing Finesmelt technology to turn iron fines held in waste stockpiles at the Palabora Mine into metallic units for use in steel making and foundries. The project is in the pilot stage and needs funding to proceed towards commercialisation.
Tait said if MRI could secure a new equity injection, it would hold a rights issue so minorities could participate. It would also be able to satisfy auditors Grant Thornton of its going-concern status so they could sign off the February 2016 accounts.