WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-06-08 Time: 09:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
By Simon Mundy
Johannesburg – MINING entrepreneur Peter Skeat yesterday vowed to use technological advances to more than triple gold production at the Agnes mines near Barberton by the end of next year, through a new entity to be known as Galaxy Gold Mining.
Mr Skeat bought the Agnes mine in 2008 with two associates for R16m. It will now be sold to investment group Wesco in a reverse takeover agreement worth R336m, which will see Wesco take full ownership of Agnes, with Agnes shareholders taking 92,2% of Wesco.
Wesco – a cash shell since selling its stake in Toyota SA two years ago – would relist on the JSE as Galaxy Gold on August 11, said Mr Skeat, CEO designate.
“We like the route of going through Wesco because the relevant structures are already in place, which saves costs, and we know the company’s clean.”
Mr Skeat expected to raise R250m-R400m through the listing and a private share placement, with the funds used for exploration and a new plant.
That would see mining output increase from 18000 tons to 53000 tons a month, with gold production rising from 23000oz to 78 000oz a year.
The sharp increase in production would be enabled by the Biox treatment process, which was developed by Gencor (now BHP Billiton) two decades ago but has been relatively little used to date in SA, though it has been used on a smaller scale at Agnes.
Biox enables the extraction of gold from sulphide-rich ores through bacterial action. Previously, the difficulty of processing the sulphides meant mining in the Barberton area was limited to relatively small-scale operations. But Mr Skeat saw the potential to produce large volumes, achieving economies of scale while saving on operating costs due to the shallow mines’ low energy requirements.
“The biggest difference is in hoisting – we can bring up the ore for a fraction of the cost faced by a typical gold mine in SA. Our cash costs will be equal to or less than 500/oz – they should fall as our tonnage goes up.”
The difficulty of extracting gold from the Barberton area has deterred prospectors since the region’s gold rush in the late 19th century.
Cadiz analyst Peter Major said uptake of the Biox system had been held back by the high royalties charged by its developers, but high gold prices presented an ideal environment to use the technology on a large scale.
However, tripling gold production by the end of next year would be “almost impossible”.
“It depends on how much money they raise – but I’d be surprised if they manage to raise the sums they want in the current funding environment.”
Original Source: 
Original date published: 8 June 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201006080590.html?viewall=1