JOHANNESBURG (Business Day) --South Africa's coal assets have been attracting increasing investment as international coal prices soar and Eskom builds new coal-fired power stations.
DMC is an unlisted South African resources company founded by Heine van Niekerk nine years ago.
The Liberian government named DMC this year as provisional winner of the tender to develop the $1.6 billion Western Cluster Iron Ore Deposits.
DMC director Pieter Wiese said on Friday the Liberian government was finalising the due-diligence investigation. An announcement on the final allocation of the bid was expected at the end of this month.
London Mining has an operating iron ore mine in Brazil. It has projects under development in Sierra Leone, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Greenland.
Asked if London Mining would participate in the Liberian project, Wiese said the DMC Energy subsidiary was a separate company, but as London Mining had an iron ore project in Sierra Leone the two companies could examine synergies in future.
London Mining said that it would take a stake in DMC Energy in staged payments. DMC Energy would be reorganised to hold 70% of the Rietkuil coal project, and 69.65% of the Limpopo coal and Pixley Ka Seme coal and torbanite deposits.
Rietkuil - close to Eskom's Kendal and Grootvlei power stations - has an inferred resource of up to 288-million tons of coal, and Wiese said that DMC hoped to start mining there late next year.
The Limpopo property has a potential 426-million tons, of which 30% is soft coking and 30% steam coal, while Pixley Ka Seme, in southern Mpumalanga, has an estimated 234-million tons of coal and 73-million tons of torbanite. Torbanite is high-yielding oil shale.
London Mining said DMC Energy had an export allocation of 40-million tons a year through Mozambique.
The company was also acquiring coal deposits in Swaziland, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
