Trev : I'm very surprised to hear Iscor is interested in gold.
Iscor stands for Iron and Steel CORporation and always did what its name says. Lately, because of tariff problems in the US and the downturn of the Asian economies the company has done very badly. It has closed its whole Pretoria operation and in Vereeniging closed two (of 4) blast furnaces. It has also opened a new smelter at Saldanha Bay (look at the map) which, although far from the iron ore, manganese and chrome mines in the northern Cape Province, is very near to the nuclear reactor at Koeberg (near Cape Town) which supplies electricity.
Frankly, I can't see how buying into a Canadian junior gold operation helps them to get their assets out of the country. Gold has never been their field of interest and their investment in steel was/is substantial. The company was originally formed in the 1930s by the government in an attempt to make SA independent of British steel. At that time SA was a colony. So, it was a symbol of national pride and prestige. It went public about fifteen years ago and since then has been going down and down.
You would be interested that Taiwan can import both iron and chrome ore from South Africa and, after processing it, can then re-export stainless steel back to SA (at a profit to them) cheaper than we can make it. That is the case with virtually all of our primary products and the reason why so little beneficiation is done in SA. Just too expensive.
The local costs are simply too high. Labor is the most expensive --- per unit of production -- in the world. And still they strike and strike --- for higher wages --- forcing the few remaining factories to close down. You can see why I am so apprehensive of investing in the low-grade, old gold mines which are, by necessity, labor intensive. That's why Mr Kebble & Co is really sailing against the wind.
And, you can also see why I am pissed off with Mandela & Co. They live in cloud cuckoo land. And know only the teachings of Marx and Lenin. That the white capitalists have stolen the fruits of the black workers' labor. Socialism is really wonderful for these guys when they have piles of someone else's money to redistribute --- like in the US! But, unfortunately for them in SA, the money dried up! |
