Central Rand Gold looking for new CEO

22 Dec 2015

Junior gold miner Central Rand Gold (CRD) has announced that its CEO, Johan du Toit, has resigned to pursue other opportunities.

Allen Phillips, a non-executive director who had been performing a more hands-on role in the operations of the company, would be appointed interim CEO while a search was undertaken to identify a new chief executive in 2016, the company said.

It also announced the appointment of Mark Austin as a non-executive director and Lola Trollip as chief financial officer, saying it was strengthening the operational and technical expertise of its board as the company continued to look at opencast and surface opportunities in order to expand gold production.

At the same time, the low-cost gold producer said it had also decided not to proceed with the sale of Central Rand Gold (Netherlands Antilles) to four Asian investor groups as it believed the process would "unnecessarily prolong shareholder uncertainty with no immediate prospect of a satisfactory outcome".

"The company will continue to engage with the Asian investor groups should the prospects for the completion of a transaction involving the sale of Central Rand Gold (Netherlands Antilles) N.V. improve," it said.

It added that it was continuing to negotiate with one Asian investor regarding a strategic investment in Central Rand Gold Limited.

"This negotiation will continue in parallel with discussions with other third party investors, to provide funding in order to pursue growth opportunities for the company."

The company said it remained well positioned to benefit from the improvements and upgrades made to its metallurgical plant during 2014 and 2015 and the identification of internal and external sources of economic surface and open pit gold-bearing material.

Source: BDpro