Namibia seeks stake in Navachab gold mine

Namibia’s state-owned mining company is in talks with QKR Corp. to buy a stake in the Navachab gold mine that it agreed to buy from AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. for $110 million this month.

“Our intention is to get into Navachab mine,” Eliphas Hawala, the managing director of the southern African nation’s Epangelo Mining Co., said by phone today. “We signed confidentiality agreements with Anglo and the bidder and there are negotiations but we don’t know when they will be concluded.”

Open-pit Navachab, about 170 kilometers (106 miles) northwest of the capital, Windhoek, produced 74,000 ounces of gold in 2012. QKR, an investment company founded by former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker Lloyd Pengilly, is also paying the world’s third-biggest gold producer a quarterly royalty covering 2 percent of the ounces sold from Navachab’s smelter for seven years, Johannesburg-based AngloGold said on Feb. 10.

Namibia is the world’s biggest offshore diamond miner and the fourth-largest uranium producer.

–Editors: Ana Monteiro, Alastair Reed

To contact the reporter on this story: Felix Njini in Windhoek at fnjini@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net