MANILA, Philippines - UK-based miner Crew Gold Corp. is selling out of Apex Mining Co. Inc. whose principal asset is the Maco Gold Mine in south-eastern Mindanao.
In a disclosure to regulators, Crew Gold, which owns a 72.9 percent stake in Apex Mining, said it signed an agreement to sell its interest in the local mining firm and all its related assets to a private company with headquarters in Malaysia for a total of $7 million.
The sale is subject to government regulatory approvals and is expected to be completed within approximately 90 days.
The agreement calls for total cash payments of $1 million upon signing of the agreement, $5 million upon completion, and a final $1 million when Philippine regulatory approvals are obtained.
This follows the previously announced sale by Crew Gold of all assets, infrastructure, inventories and goodwill at the Nalunaq gold mine to Angus & Ross Plc (A&R) for a total consideration of $1.5 million cash.
On Sept. 9, Crew Gold signed an agreement with Rambler Resources for the sale of of the Nugget Pond processing facility in Canada at a price of CAD$3.5 million. The sale is expected to take place around Dec. 9, 2009.
“This allows Crew’s scaled down management team to concentrate all efforts on the LEFA project in Guinea which is expected to complete its ramp up by approximately the end of 2009,” Crew Gold said.
The LEFA gold project is located approximately 700 km northeast of Conakry, the capital of the Republic of Guinea. The principal concession, governed by the Convention de Base, covers an area of approximately 1,600 square kilometers and is known as the Dinguiraye Concession.
LEFA also has a further six contiguous properties over which Crew has rights derived from six prospecting permits, bringing the total project area to approximately 2,552 square kilometers.
The Maco mine needs about $12 million to acquire stockpiling, grinding and flotation facilities.
When all the additional structures and equipment are in place, the Maco mine can double its daily production capacity to 1,000 tons per day (tpd) from the current 500 tpd.
Once full production capacity is reached, Apex can start hiring new employees anew. It would be recalled that in early 2009, the company scaled down its manpower to 262.