Central Rand Gold (CRND)

CENTRAL RAND GOLD (CRND)

DESK
While gold miners these days have a penchant for frontier exploration, Central Rand Gold has made it its motto to bring commercial gold mining back to Johannesburg, South Africa.
The company, which made its debut on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 with a market cap of £308 million, has homed-in on gold prospecting and mining in the Central Rand Goldfield.
In what was deemed “trial mining,” it snapped up seven New Order prospecting rights covering a host of old mines in the region, believed to house up to 50 million ounces of gold.
To date, it’s obtained a mining licence for 12 kilometres of the full 40 kilometres strike, in its effort to prove up the acreage and show it can commercially extract gold.
But it hasn’t been quite the easy ride this daring company might have hoped for.
In fact, Central Rand has been plagued by rising acid mine drainage left over from historical drilling at the site.
To make matters worse, heavy rains and flooding in the Gauteng province earlier this year just heightened the problem.
In February the company’s shares plunged almost 50% after it doubted its survival, unless the South African government helped with the problem.
A month later, the story looked to take a turn for the worse after the growing problem forced the company to suspend underground capital development.
Since that time, Central Rand Gold has had four meetings with the South African Department of Water Affairs and while progress was finally made, thanks to the DWA committing to help resolve the problem, the company continues to remain cautious.
After all, until final engineering designs are available for the project, the start date, as well as to what level the water table can be stopped at, remains uncertain.
So for now, the focus remains very much on preserving its coffers.
At the end of April, the company had cash and near cash resources of around $7 million.
But with the challenge far from over for this miner, and its shares taking more twists and turns then a rollercoaster, how this will map out is anyone’s guess.

OUTRO
(Alison sitting at desk as water starts to fill the screen )

(Gasping for air) -
“Because as we all know - if there’s one thing you can’t control, it’s the weather!”