Mintails completes restructuring of its operations

Gold miner Mintails, now in business rescue, had completed the restructuring of its operations with the agreement of unions, business rescue practitioner Dave Lake of Lake Strategic Solutions said on Tuesday.

The miner is in talks with funders, black empowerment partners and regulators to meet conditions to implement the second phase of its rescue plan. The company, which employed about 1,000 people, was placed in business rescue two years ago because of mismanagement, costly overheads, lack of working capital, labour unrest and operational difficulties.

At the time, it had about R300m in environmental liabilities, for which it had set aside only R25m.

The Federation for a Sustainable Environment has been battling for years with Mintails and other mining companies to tackle the pollution and health hazards caused by historical gold mining on the West Rand.

Mintails has about 100million tonnes of gold-bearing tailings on the West Rand, which it was putting through its Gold Plant 1. Mintails also owns Gold Plant 2, capable of treating only gold tailings, which was mothballed about six years ago.

The rescue plan has two phases: the first included a review of operations and finding new black empowerment partners and funding. In phase two, assuming funding had been secured, work would be completed on the plants and new sources of material would be secured. Work would begin on tackling the environmental liabilities.

Once the second phase was operating sustainably, business-rescue proceedings would end.

Lake said that Mintails would process more third-party material through Gold Plant 1 and less of its own than was originally planned.

MINTAILS, WHICH EMPLOYED ABOUT 1,000 PEOPLE, WAS PLACED IN BUSINESS RESCUE TWO YEARS AGO