TSHIPI é Ntle Manganese Mining is talking to BHP Billiton about possibly buying the world’s largest diversified mining company’s neighbouring.Hotazel manganese mine to unlock cost savings.

Tshipi operates the recently built Borwa mine in the Northern Cape andwas on track to produce 2-million tonnes of manganese ore this year,said Saki Macozoma, Tshipi’s nonexecutive chairman.

Tshipi is operating Borwa off generator-supplied power and not the grid.It was using an innovative way to rail more ore to Port Elizabeth thanits 1-million-tonne allocation from Transnet, he said in an interview onFriday.

Regional consolidation around Borwa would bring a host of benefits, hesaid, including in his strategy United Manganese of Kalahari (UMK),

which is 49% owned by Russia’s Renova.Ntsimbintle, the empowerment partner in Tshipi, owns 9% of BHP Billiton’s Hotazel mine.

"We’ve always had our hand up if there was ever going to be corporate action as far as they, BHP, were concerned," Mr Macozoma said.

He said he recently spoke to BHP Billiton CEO Andrew Mackenzie to"communicate our interest in consolidating those two mines whenever

possible. The response was they are busy spinning out some of theirbusinesses and until that’s completed they are not contemplating any

corporate action."

He has also spoken to Graham Kerr, who will head the new company housingformer BHP Billiton assets including Hotazel.

"Graham said apart from talking about shared services, his team couldn’t apply its mind to the manganese assets until the new company is

formed," he said.

Tshipi and BHP were investigating operational synergies given the proximity of the mines.

Tshipi’s ore loading facilities are more rapid than those at Hotazel and could be shared to lower costs, and the parties are looking at other

opportunities to cut costs. At an operational level, Borwa management is talking to its peers at UMK to find similar synergies. Those talks were not at a corporate level yet, he said.

Consolidation of these three operations could make SA’s manganese exports more competitive than those from Australia. In SA, ore has to be railed about 1,000km to the port, he said.

Tshipi has a prospect to the north of Borwa and at which it has conducted exploration drilling during the past three years.

Tshipi is 49.9% owned by Australia’s Jupiter Mines and 50.1% by a special purpose vehicle called Ntsimbintle, which is 74% owned by black empowerment groups including Safika Resources and Nkojane. Pallinghurst Resources is a shareholder in Jupiter.

• [Editor:Sophie]