President and Chief Executive Officer of Golden Star Resources Limited, Andrew Wray says there will be no job losses following the agreement with Future Global Resources to trade off 90 per cent interest in the Bogoso-Prestea Gold Mine.
Mr. Wray gave the assurance that, the new owner will not only maintain the existing workforce to ensure continuity in its operations, but will also ensure environmental sustainability adding that, the agreement is positive for Future Global Resources and Golden Star and its employees, as well as the host communities and Ghana in general.
“From the conversations we have had from the plans that Future Global Resources has, they don’t have the intention to make cuts. In fact, what they said to me was that, we want to look at how we can grow this asset and it is hard to do that without people. So, they want to retain the mining skills in the business and then use those to help the business continue with the plan that we have for it,”
The Mine employs about 600 workers directly and 600 others indirectly.
Touching on environmental challenges and sustainability, he said the FGR and its parent company, Blue International Holdings, are committed to sustaining the gains made.
“For us as a business, we have a real focus on our environmental liabilities and we are fully complaint to all of those. I mentioned that we are concerned about rehabilitating the ground that has been disturbed from mining and this is one of the key approaches to the business of FGR and Blue International and they fully understand. As with any new owner, you take on those commitments and over time, we are gradually rehabilitating the area. We spend some money each year to do that.”
Background
The Future Global Resource Limited (FGR) last month acquired 90% of the Bogoso- Prestea Gold mines at a purchase price of $55 million after signing a binding agreement with The Golden Star Resources Limited.
The Golden Star Resources Limited announced that the purchase price was $55 million with a further contingent of up to $40 million. It also said that there will be staged payments to ensure that the FGR focuses on investment capacity on the asset itself, while providing Golden Star with exposure to its long-term growth potential.
The FGR said they intended to review the entire Bogoso-Prestea project portfolio, which includes the significant refractory sulfide resource, and an extensive tenement package with exploration potential following its acquisition.
The operations at the Prestea underground are also planned to continue, and this will include the use of Alimak mining on 24 level and long hole open stoping mining activities on the newly developed 17 Level.
President and Chief Executive Officer of the Golden Star Resources, Andrew Wray, said the sale will strengthen their balance sheet and also allow the company to accelerate the growth and development of the large resource base at the Wassa mine and increase exploration activities in the wider Wassa-HBB project area
The transaction following the satisfaction of the closing conditions in the agreement and the obtainment of government approvals is expected to be complete by September 30, 2020.
