Construction and engineering company Aveng on Tuesday said it had ceased contractor mining operations at Aquarius Platinum’s Marikana platinum mine and would claim more than R200-million in payments from Aquarius.
Earlier on Tuesday, Aquarius’s 50,5% owned subsidiary Aquarius Platinum South Africa (AQPSA) announced that it had rescinded the Marikana mining contract with Moolman Mining, which is a division of Grinaker LTA — an Aveng subsidiary — and would sue the group for damages of R1-billion.
The contract between Moolman Mining and APQSA accounted for about 1,5% or R203-million of Aveng’s revenue of R13,535-billion in the group’s financial year to June 2005, Aveng added.
“Today, Moolmans ceased operations at Marikana and will be seeking to redeploy the large number of people and substantial quantity of equipment employed on the project,” Aveng said.
The dispute arose when APQSA underpaid Moolmans on its monthly certificates, the company added.
“Arising from this dispute, the parties agreed that independent auditors KPMG would report on inter alia the contract expenditure incurred on the Marikana mine and the accuracy of the calculation of the contract expenditure allocated to each of the cost elements fuel, local and foreign for the period from inception to December 31 2002 and for each six-month period thereafter and to determine the actual weightings for these cost elements for the same period,” Aveng said.
Based on the KPMG report, an invoice was issued by Moolmans Mining to APQSA for R169-million and no payment had been received from AQPSA in this regard, the company added.
The underpayment was escalated to more than R200-million at the end of November.
“In addition, substantial claims in respect of standing time and other variations have been lodged by Moolmans,” Aveng stated.
Late on Monday afternoon, APQSA notified Moolmans that it had taken the decision to rescind the Marikana mining contract with immediate effect, based on an “actionable misrepresentation” at the time of agreeing the contract about four years ago, the company said.
Moolmans denied misrepresenting any material facts and that the Aquarius move to rescind the agreement constituted an unlawful repudiation of the contract, which had been accepted by Moolmans. — I-Net Bridge