Mining’s old guard needs strong medicine
A new report details subpar investor returns in the mining industry over the last decade, particularly big cap diversified companies which have not adapted to new realities.
Banro Corporation announced on Monday after the close a reshuffling of its board.
Bernard van Rooyen, a Banro director since 1997 and ex-Gold Fields executive, will assume the role of chairman and Peter Ruxton, on the board since October 2010, has resigned to pursue other business interests.
Banro shares closed down 3.1% on Monday at $4.06. The volatile stock is now down more than 25% from a high of $5.68 hit on February 25 this year after it announced an increase in the size of a private placement of debt to $175 million.
Banro’s Twangiza oxide mine poured its first gold early in the fourth quarter of 2011 with projected annual output of 120,000 ounces. The company owns four additional licences along the same gold belt in the east of the country.
Canada-based Banro said the money would be used for the construction of a second oxide gold mine, Namoya, and to work towards a hydro power option for the belt.
Writing in the Northern Miner in April Martin Jones, head of the Banro Foundation, described the company’s approach to the central Africa country this way:
For the past six and a half years, our company, Banro (BAA-T, BAA-X), has been engaged in intensive mineral exploration in what many consider to be one of the less fashionable addresses on Earth: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
We began with a handful of geologists comprised of a seasoned team of ex-pats from Ghana, Tanzania, and the U.K. who led and mentored a group of newly minted graduates from the local Bukavu Technical Institute.
Within a few years, that small band of explorers had delineated over 11 million oz. of gold and identified 16 new targets for follow-up in the DRC’s eastern provinces of South Kivu and Maniema – surely one of the most successful exploration programs in recent African history.
Apart from rich gold fields the DRC is home to the world’s largest cobalt resource and second globally in terms of copper deposits.
The war-torn country recently emerged from a fiercely contested and disputed presidential election and MINING.com reported last week that the death of the DRC’s mining go-to guy and power-behind-the-throne will reshape country’s resource sector.
