Miner OZ Minerals says it will focus on expanding its Prominent Hill mine, after announcing it had completed the sale of its Martabe gold and silver project in Indonesia.
The sale completion, expected after final approvals were granted last week, leaves OZ Minerals with the Prominent Hill copper-gold mine in South Australia as its only major asset.
Under the deal, China Sci-Tech Holdings Ltd paid $211 million ($A261.3 million) for the Martabe mine.
China Sci-Tech also agreed to pay a further $6.5 million ($A8.05 million) to OZ Minerals for on-site spending from April 1, $1 million ($A1.24 million) less than estimated last week.
In a statement, OZ Minerals said it was now able to restore normal mining rates at Prominent Hill and recommence studies into expanding the mine.
"OZ Minerals has also re-activated exploration programmes in the highly prospective wider Prominent Hill area and elsewhere," the company said.
It said recent asset sales had resolved the company's refinancing issued and strengthened its balance sheet.
The sale of Martabe marks a big turnaround OZ Minerals' financial fortunes.
Just a few weeks ago, the company had about $1 billion in debt due to be repaid to bankers.
But thanks to asset sales, including the sale of the majority of its assets to China Minmetals Non Ferrous Metals Co Ltd for $1.354 billion ($A1.68 billion), the miner now is nearly $1 billion in the black.
At 1114 AEST, shares in OZ Minerals were trading up two cents, to 92 cents.
http://www.watoday.com.au/breaking-news-business/oz-minerals-closes-261m-martabe-sale-20090630-d37e.html
© Copyright 2009 by Intellasia.net
Top of Page
|
