Modern Mining June 2018

MINING News

DRA backs new fund targeting the mining industry The DRA Group, a leading mining engi- neering firm, is to act as lead technical partner to CCP 12J Fund Limited (CCP 12J) in respect of engineering (EPC/M) and outsourced operations and maintenance services. qualifying companies, including junior mining companies, to access equity finance, while also providing a tax incen- tive to investors in the venture capital company.

both BHP Billiton veterans, and Nigel Townsend, founder of mining engineer- ing firm TWP, will all serve on the fund’s investment committee. DRA has committed an initial R150 million to the CCP 12J initiative. CCP 12J completed an initial third party capital raise after a soft launch in February 2018, shortly after it received its Financial Services Provider licence from the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA, previously FSB) and the venture capital company approval from SARS. Jean Nel says that the fund will not gen- erally look to invest in primary exploration, pre-production mining projects or early stage feasibility studies. “We plan to earn an attractive risk-adjusted return for our investors by pursuing lower risk ancillary or secondary mining-related projects such as tailings retreatment, dump reprocessing operations or brownfields processing plant expansions, where we can partner with existing industry players and can mitigate as many inherent risks as commercially possible,” he says. 

Jean Nel (former CEO of Aquarius Platinum) assisted in the development of CCP 12J as a solution that is aimed at both providing attractive risk-adjusted returns to investors and which will promote capital investment in South Africa’s under- invested mining sector. Besides the access to the skills and resources within DRA and Stockdale Street, CCP 12J has been able to attract a formidable team of industry stalwarts to senior management and investment committee positions. Paul Miller, experi- enced Nedbank CIB mining investment banker and former Keaton Energy Chief Executive Officer, has been recruited as Managing Director of the CCP 12J man- agement company while Mike Clare, financial services distribution specialist, will head up fund raising and distribu- tion. Michael Golding and Tom Borman,

CCP 12J is a new mining-focused ven- ture capital company, established in terms of Section 12J of the Income Tax Act. DRA will also be a principal investor in CCP  12J. Stockdale Street, a private equity fund manager which advises DRA’s largest shareholder, is a co-founder of CCP 12J. CCP 12J will leverage off both DRA’s extensive minerals processing, mining engineering and outsourced operations capabilities and Stockdale Street’s disci- plined focus on capital preservation, to makemining-related equity investments in South Africa. CCP 12J will seek to invest in mining projects which are, predominantly, related or ancillary to existing mining operations and which meet the criteria of a‘qualifying company’under Section 12J of the Income Tax Act. Section 12J was established to assist

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