As communicated earlier in the press release of March 11, 2008 Empresa Minera (Bergbau) A.G. negotiated an option to acquire 51 % of shares of the Taiwan based ornamental stone mining company Everloong Stone Ltd.. The company owns concessions for marble mining and operates a quarry being located in the Sichuan Province of Central China.
The execution of the project was interrupted by extensive damages of the catastrophic earth quake in May 2008 which affected the whole region and made any ground work impossible for several months. Infrastructure has been repaired in the meantime so that a continuation of the project is now possible. The stock option must be exercised until June 30, 2009. This period will be used to conduct a due-diligence investigation. |
The company’s consultant geologist Dr. Michael Biste visited the quarry the first time in November 2007, when he represented the company in the symposium on “Mining and Environment” in Chengdu. He recommended in his report to follow up the project because the extension of the marble occurrences looked very similar to the famous marble district of Carrara in northern Italy. He estimated roughly that the expansion and modernization of the operation would cost US$ 10.0 millions.
He visited then together with the manager of the Empresa Minera (Bergbau) AG Mr. Hans-Jörg Suter the marble quarries and marketing facilities of Carrara. They showed the Italian marketing experts samples from the Everloong Stone quarry in China, who certified excellent quality and a good chance for selling the product at the European market.
Empresa Minera (Bergbau) AG will complete in the next months the due-diligence investigation of the project. It will consider technical, legal, financial, commercial and ecological features of the project. It is planned that Dr. Biste visits the quarry a second time in order to define the extension of the deposit, to determine the volume of commercial material and important technical mining parameters. |
