Red Rock Resources (LON:RRR) offered its condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Jupiter Mines' (ASX:JMS) late chairman Geoff Wedlock, who died in a plane crash on Saturday in West Africa. Pallinghurst (JSE:PGL) chairman Brian Gilbertson, has joined the board as a non-executive director and temporarily assumed the position of acting non-executive chairman, to ensure corporate stability and continuity for JMS over this difficult period.
Geoff Wedlock was travelling to the Yangadou mine in Cameroon in his role as Sundance Resources (ASX: SDL) chairman, along with the entire board of Sundance directors. Over the weekend it emerged that the chartered aircraft, carrying 11 passengers, went down in thick jungle and rescue workers had been searching for the crash site.
Sundance confirmed earlier today that rescuers had found the wreckage, and sadly there were no survivors. Sundance chief executive Don Lewis, company secretary John Carr-Gregg and non-executive directors Ken Talbot, John Jones and Craig Oliver all died in the crash.
Red Rock’s 25.1%-owned associate, Jupiter, is currently finalising the acquisition of a 49.9% stake in the world-class Tshipi Kalahari Manganese Project in South Africa. Pallinghurst's Gilbertson was expected to join Jupiter’s board in the coming months, subject to the successful completion of the transaction. He now joins the board to stabilise the business.
A shareholders meeting is planned for August in order to approve the proposal. The share-based Tshipi deal is worth approximately A$490m and it is expected to transform Jupiter into a significant manganese and iron ore explorer and developer. Under the terms of the deal, Jupiter will issue 1.1bn new shares to the Pallinghurst co-investors at a price of A$0.2110 per share.
The Tshipi project is currently being developed through a joint venture between Ntsimbintle, a Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) consortium holding 50.1%, and a group of investors, including Red Rock’s former associate Pallinghurst. The project is located in the Kalahari basin, adjacent to the BHP Billiton (LSE: BLT) controlled Mamatwan mine. Tshipi will mine the contiguous Mamatwan ore body which has which has been mined for 45 years, and is currently producing 3m tonnes of manganese ore per annum.
The Tshipi joint venture carried out a comprehensive drilling campaign and completed the project's feasibility study during 2008 and 2009. Consequently a SAMREC mineral resource estimate totalling 163.23m tonnes grading 37.1%, which will be re-stated in compliance with the JORC-code in due course.