China’s steelmakers should not try draw their government into iron ore price talks with Australian miners, Australia’s trade minister said on Monday, as the mills struggle to pin back soaring raw material prices.

Any overt efforts by Beijing to influence iron ore prices would likely deal the coup de grace to the decades old annual benchmark pricing mechanism, already teetering on the brink of collapse due to increasingly volatile market conditions and the growth in the spot market.

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Project house TWP is building a gold plant in Zimbabwe on a build, own and operate (BOO) basis as part of a toll treating agreement with African Consolidated Resources.

TWP CEO and Basil Read executive director Nigel Townshend tells Mining Weekly Online that the plant, to be commissioned in June, will treat 4,5g/t gold-dump material at the rate of 20 000 t a month.

TWP Investments, the company directly involved, is headed by Dean Cunningham and TWP is now part of the JSE-listed Basil Read group.

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ASX- and JSE-listed gold junior Gold One plans to spin off its Megamine project into separately JSE-listed company, CEO Neal Froneman told Mining Weekly Online on Monday.

The Megamine project consists of prospecting rights over 16 000 ha in South Africa’s Witwatersrand basin. By listing a separate entity for the development of the Megamine project, Gold One would be able to raise capital without diluting shareholder value, Froneman said in an interview on the sidelines of the Paydirt Gold conference in Perth.

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US-based gold-miner Newmont would complete the ramp up of its Boddington mine, in Western Australia, by the end of the third quarter, regional group executive Philip Stephenson reported on Monday.

Speaking at the Paydirt Gold conference, in Perth, Stephenson said that the project ramp-up was around 70% completed, and that copper and gold recoveries to date had been above design expectation.

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The iron-ore market would continue to be a “very good” market to be in over the short to medium-term, as prices would remain “extremely strong”, London Mining CEO Graeme Hossie said on Monday.

He told Mining Weekly Online in a telephonic interview that this boded well for London Mining, which was bringing its first iron-ore project into production, as it would be able to take advantage of these good market conditions.

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AltX- and Aim-listed DiamondCorp seeks raise up to £7,1-million to resume underground development at its Lace mine in South Africa and to continue with exploration in Botswana.

The South Africa-focused company had placed 100 154 695 shares at 7p a share, which represented a discount of 26% to the closing mid-market price of 9,5p on Friday.

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Gold producer Gold Fields would spend around $1,1-billion over the next five years to reach 750 000 oz/y production at South Africa’s South Deep operation.

The company executive vice president for exploration and business development Tommy McKeith said on Monday that production at South Deep had already increased from less than 30 000 oz a quarter to around 75 000 oz a quarter.

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Aim-listed Stellar Diamonds was acquiring additional mining equipment to further boost production and processing capacity at its Mandala and Bomboko diamond mines, in Guinea, the company reported on Monday.

Among other equipment, it would install a 16-foot pan plant and a Flow Sort X-Ray machine at the Bomboko mine by the second quarter of this year.

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Two weeks after an 8.8 -magnitude earthquake most of the country was left without power when a transformer failed in the central electricity grid

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The report by the Asian superpower said nether Rio Tinto or the Australian government were to blame for the collapse of the $19.5bn tie-up

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