Bushveld to buy stake in Namibia tin project

Diversified mineral explorer Bushveld is to buy an interest in the Uis tin project in Namibia.

The company's subsidiary Greenhills Resources will buy a 49% stake in Dawnmin Africa Investments, which is the 85% owner of the tin project, from a consortium of shareholders in Namibia.

Greenhills will conduct due diligence on the Uis tin project until the end of March, and if successful, buy the 49% stake for 41m shares in Bushveld Minerals, equivalent to about £650,000.

Erongo Tin holds the 50.5% majority of the issued share capital of Dawnmin not held by the consortium, which comprises of Namuis, Havana Investments and Sweltering Desert Investments.

The project, which is one of the largest undeveloped opencast hard rock tin deposits in the world, is held by Guinea Fowl Investments Twenty Seven, which is owned 85% by Dawnmin Africa Investments, while the remaining 15% is held by Small Miners of Uis, a company owned by the Namibian Government.

The Uis tin project has three mining licenses, ML 134, ML 129 (B1 and C1) and ML 133. The ML 134 license has an estimated 70.3 million tonnes at 0.14% tin for a total potential resource of over 90 kilotonnes of contained tin.

Chief executive Fortune Mojapelo said: "This development is aligned with our long-stated strategy to establish Greenhills Resources and Lemur Resources as attractive stand-alone platforms with quality strategic partners and strong dedicated management teams to deliver long term shareholder value.

“For Greenhills this means consolidating a critical mass of mineable, low-cost resources with a near term production profile while for Lemur this means securing a quality power purchase agreement and an IPP license for a thermal coal-based power generation play in Madagascar. All this while the company continues to progress its flagship vanadium platform and progress towards completing the Vametco Alloys acquisition."

Shares in Bushveld were down 7.94% to 1.45 at 1117 GMT.