Resource Generation (Resgen) is developing South Africa’s largest remaining coal deposit. It announced on Thursday that its joint venture at Ledjada had been granted a 30 year mining right for its Boikarabelo mine in South Africa.
The managing director of Resgen Paul Jury saw this as a major step in the development of the mine which hopes to start production in 2013. He added that they expected the mining right to facilitate the discussions with Eskom about coal supply to its power stations and with Transnet about transport to domestic customers and ports.
Resgen’s share in the joint venture is 74%. The remaining 26% is with Fairy Wing Trading or FWT. FWT is a company owned by South African business persons who have strong commercial and government relations. The 26% of the Ledjada joint venture was previously owned by the BEE or the Black Economic Empowerment.
The Boikarabelo coal mine has 6.4 billion tonnes of resources with a 120 meter thick coal seam at a relatively shallow depth of merely 20-35 meters. Of this there is a probable reserve of 745 million tonnes of thermal coal. The rest will be soft coking coal. The mine is ideally suited for low cost, open- cut mining.