Platinum Mine Closes, Projections Decreased

Mining Weekly reported another platinum mine closed as analysts projected platinum prices going even lower.

As quoted in the market news:

Midcap platinum miner Aquarius Platinum has placed another operation on care and maintenance. This time it is Everest mine, in Mpumalanga, which follows Marikana, in the North West. Read on page 23 of this edition of Mining Weekly of the Johannesburg- and London-listed company now having three of its seven operations out of action, given the 2011 mothballing of the Blue Ridge mine, in Mpumalanga. London analyst Liberum Capital reports that Everest has been suffering a loss of R3 500/oz. Aquarius’s remaining two mines – the flagship Kroondal operation, near Rustenburg, and the Mimosa joint venture mine, in Zimbabwe – plus its two tailings operations are expected to yield cash flows, but Liberum puts a question mark over Aquarius’s acquisition under the current terms of Northam Platinum’s Booysendal South assets and rules out finance for the Booysendal North project completely. Although Aquarius is grabbing all the closure headlines, Liberum says its early action is putting it ahead of its peers from an investor’s point of view.

Click here to read the full Mining Weekly report.