Mano River Absorbs African Aura At Last, Adopting Its Name, Its Canadian Listing, And Its Cameroon Portfolio
By Alastair Ford
minesite.com
Goodbye Mano River, hello African Aura Mining Inc. As far as most of the world is concerned, Mano River Resources is no more, following the successful completion on October 13th of the friendly merger with African Aura Resources. The Mano River name will live on locally in Liberia for the time being, where it has become an extremely well known brand. African Aura chief Luis da Silva knows that branding consultants would have delivered advice to proceed thus, had they been engaged, but he’s decided to forgo the probable £500,000 cost and just to move ahead on the basis of pragmatism.
There are two driving forces behind the name change. One is the Canadian regulatory authorities, who require that any company that undertakes a share consolidation, as African Aura has just done, change its name. The other is the more nebulous, but probably ultimately more interesting reason that as a more generic catch-all African name, African Aura will allow the new, enlarged company more freedom of action on the continent. In explaining this, Luis da Silva sounds like he wants to do more deals, although whether a friendly merger would be on the cards again remains open to question, given how long this one’s taken.
Still, at least now the newly enlarged African Aura can once again get down to brass tacks and focus fully on the business of mining. Drilling on the company’s New Liberty gold property in Liberia commenced on 14th October, so that’s clearly one project that will remain close to the top of the new priorities list – and why not, given where the gold price is, and that there’s already 1.4 million ounces to work off there. Also right at the top of the list will be the Putu Range iron ore property, also in Liberia, which is currently the subject of a 27,000 metre drill campaign and under joint venture with Russian steel giant Severstal. And with iron ore prices once again on the march too, and the resource at Putu already ringing in at over a billion tonnes, the reasons for prioritizing that work are pretty clear too.
The Cameroon assets that come into the company are at a slightly less advanced stage, but both the Nkout iron project and the Batouri gold project will be the subject of further investigation. The company’s rare earth and uranium interests, held via a 70 per cent stake in Ridgeway Energy, will, says Luis, not be an immediate focus. Having said that, rare earths have been creating a bit of a stir lately, as the Chinese, the world’s largest producers, are increasingly keeping all their production for themselves. So worth keeping in mind Mano’s interest.
The next news, though, is likely to come from the New Liberty drilling, about which Luis says he will be updating the market fairly rapidly. Luis has always had high hopes for this project, but now the company’s ambitions in this area are expanding, and exploration on the surrounding areas is likely to begin in earnest fairly soon. This proposition is described in the recent company press release as “a pipeline of multiple hard rock gold deposits within truckable distances of New Liberty”. If they turn out to be mineable too, then it will be a real boon.
Overseeing all this will be a slightly larger board, as new additions David Netherway and Steven Poulton come in. This is very familiar ground for Steven, as he worked for Mano River between 1998 and 2005, and went on to become a founder of African Aura, amongst other subsequent business ventures. He also set up private resource investment group Altus Strategies, a company of which David Netherway is also director. Minesite readers will also know David from the days when GMA Resources was a subscriber, as he is a director there. He’s also on the board of Kazakhgold.
The decisions made by this beefed up board at the 15th October board meeting will drill down into the detail of exactly how African Aura proceeds from here. But the broad brush strokes are already known. Supported by a healthy US$6 million cash balance, the company will steer happily into the favourable wind of high gold and iron ore prices, having at last untangled itself from the grip of merger legalese. |
