HUNTER coal industry veteran Colin Randall is a step closer to developing a phosphate mine on the French Polynesian atoll of Makatea, thanks to a merger of his company, Avenir Makatea Pt Ltd, with a listed New Zealand phosphate producer, Chatham Rock Phosphate Ltd.
Chatham announced the deal to the New Zealand stock exchange last week, describing it as a $1.5 million acquisition financed by the issue of new Chatham shares, with Avenir Makatea holding about 28 per cent of the new enlarged company.
Mr Randall, a mining engineer and manager, consultant and founding publisher of the weekly Hunter Valley Coal Report, has spent a decade developing the project on the 24-square kilometre atoll, almost 6300 kilometres north-east of Newcastle, between Tahiti and Rangiroa.
Mr Randall said yesterday that the merger would give the project the "financial firepower" to succeed. Having negotiated various permits and approvals in recent years, the next step was public inquiry to see whether the company was granted a 50-year mining concession.
Sea-based phosphate is used as a fertiliser, and Makatea was mined between 1908 and 1966 by the French Company of Oceanic Phosphates. Mr Randall said the plan was to remediate 600 hectares of degraded land as part of a plan that divided the area into 28 sites, to be mined and rehabilitated progressively.
On the company website, Mr Randall describes the project's objective as "set(ting) up an industry on a human scale to recover the secondary phosphate layer on the former mining area (currently ravaged, dangerous and difficult to access), then fill in the deep holes and replant vegetation suitable for the atoll ecosystem.
"Makatea is a forgotten island, difficult to access, and where the population has only a reduced living space because of the holes left by the first exploitation," the website says.
Makatea is home to various emblematic species including forest-dwelling coconut crabs ("kave'u") but introduced plants are a continuing environmental problem.
"The island is unique in that half is devastated by mining and the other half is primary forest with endemic species of birds and plants," Mr Randall told the Newcastle Herald yesterday.
"There are concerns that we will impact on the primary forest or not do the rehabilitation properly and we are addressing both these concerns."
Chatham is a "small cap" mining company listed in Canada and Germany as well as New Zealand, where its shares were trading after the Makatea announcement at $NZ0.095.
A share placement as a result of the merger is on offer until January 16.
Chatham is also seeking environmental approval to develop an undersea mining permit it holds over 820 square kilometres of ocean floor, 450 kilometres east of Christchurch, in an area called the Chatham Rise.
FURTHER READING
- The Avenir Makatea Pty Ltd website
- The Chatham Rock Phosphate Ltd website
- The Avenir Makatea/Chatham Rock Phosphate merger announcement
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