Johannesburg — GOLD miner Simmer & Jack would be a welcome bidder for Pamodzi Gold 's Orkney Mine in North West if it put in a reasonable offer, Orkney provisional liquidator Enver Motala said on Friday.
The liquidators issued a joint statement last week, in which they said that the bid of R110m for Orkney by Simmers was "audaciously low".
Total debt of the mine excluding liquidation and legal costs came to R421m, said the liquidators.
They said they had received a valuation of R315m for the assets.
Motala said Simmers' offer was purely for the assets of the mine and excluded its liabilities.
The liquidators also objected to the short time-frame that Simmers had put on its offer, which expired on June 15.
They said a second offer of R250m from Bele Holdings had been received, but certain conditions had to be met.
If the terms were not met, the liquidators would consider reopening the bidding process.
Simmers chief operating officer Deon van der Mescht said that Simmers' offer included other components, such as schemes of arrangement for shared costs.
The offer had now lapsed, and there were no further negotiations under way.
Both Van der Mescht and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) emphasised the urgency of resuming mining activity at Orkney.
Van der Mescht said Simmers had put an expiry date on its bid because mines deteriorated rapidly when production was halted, and the longer they were inactive the more it would cost to bring them back into production.
Trade union Solidarity said that it supported Simmers' bid for Orkney.
"The liquidators must not look at the highest bid but the benefit to workers," spokesman Reint Dykema said.
The union believed Simmers would offer a long-term solution for the mine.
NUM spokesman Shane Choshane said the NUM was not concerned about whether the buyer was Simmers or another company, as long as it had the interests of workers at heart.
The main concern was that the liquidators should speed up their decision to save jobs.
Pamodzi Gold bought the Orkney shafts from Harmony last year, but was unable to raise the necessary funding to make the business profitable.
The company was placed in provisional liquidation in April.
