Junior miners ‘need more investor support’

LOCAL institutional investors have a bigger role to play in South Africa’s junior mining industry through channelling a portion of their funds towards the sector, the chairman of US-based mining contractor Pangea, Rob Still, said on Tuesday.

Mr Still was speaking at the inaugural Junior Mining Conference, held in Johannesburg, where leaders from the industry met to debate challenges facing the sector.

While South Africa has one of the largest proven resources and reserves, the local mining industry has been criticised for lack of creative ways of increasing productivity and attracting investment, and it has missed out on the commodities boom in the past decade.

The conference also discussed ways of attracting long-term investments for sustainable growth of the industry.

The aim is to turn South Africa into a prime mine listing destination, said Noah Greenhill, head of corporate finance at Sasfin Capital.

Mr Greenhill said despite South Africa having one of the world’s largest mineral resources, there are only 80 mining companies trading on the JSE, compared with the 180 miners listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in Canada.

"The travesty is that there are more companies that have operations in Africa listed on the TSX than those in listed Africa," he said.

Policy uncertainty, low productivity levels and skills shortage are among the main issues highlighted as having stifled growth of the local industry. Increased and improved labour productivity was key to realising better growth in the sector, Justin Froneman from Standard Bank Group Securities said.

Although prices for commodities such as gold and platinum have been rising in the past decade, employment levels in both sectors have lagged behind.

According to Peter Major, a mining specialist at investment manager Cadiz, employment in gold mining dropped from 500,000 in 1990, to a workforce of just more than 150,000 this year.

Recent events at Marikana, where 34 mineworkers were shot dead by the police, highlighted the failures of government policies, said Peter Leon, the partner and head for Africa mining and energy projects at Webber Wentzel.

He said the mining charter also failed to address socioeconomic inequalities as well as broad-based black economic empowerment.

The major failure of the mining charter itself was the allocation of equity to a few politically connected consortiums and individuals in exchange for mining rights, he said. The industry needed to employ a more holistic approach to the socio-economic inequalities, and communities also should be allocated mining rights. Mining industry leaders also looked into the challenges that had an effect on creating a fertile environment for the survival of smaller companies.

Source: http://www.bdlive.co.za