ACR’s Cranswick sobers up

African Consolidated Resources chief executive Andrew Cranswick has sobered up.  His report for the six months to September appeared reconciliatory as it did not mention his long standing battle with the Zimbabwean government over the Marange diamonds for which the London-listed company is better known.

Cranswick reported that his company had made solid progress across its portfolio of assets which include gold, phosphate, nickel, platinum group metals, copper rare earth elements and diamonds. But it made a loss of $1.84 million.

The report, however, dwelt on the gold projects at Gadzema and Pickstone-Peerless. There was no mention of the company’s diamond mining dispute at all, yet the company has been embroiled in the dispute with the government for more than four years.

High Court Judge Charles Hungwe who awarded the company the Marange claims in September last year reversed his judgement in September this year. The company has said it is appealing against this ruling but it is silent about this reversal in its report.

The report was also silent about the progress that the SSSB Group which signed a memorandum of understanding with the company in June to develop open pit mining at Pickstone had made.

The SSSB Group was hastily cobbled up after the withdrawal of TWP Investments, a much larger company that belongs to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed Basil Read Holdings.

TWP said it had pulled out of the project because of the squabbles between Cranswick and the government and was pursuing its own projects in Zimbabwe.

ACR, however, remained cash rich with $7.4 million cash at the end of November.  It had a cash balance of $15.4 million at the end of March.

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