Good evening. Good afternoon, everybody. My apologies for that. I was mumbling away to myself quite pleasantly and, forgot about the microphone. My apologies. Good afternoon. My name's Graham Hill. I'm the Managing Director for the past 12 months for Premier African Minerals. I'm currently here in Johannesburg, in an office to chair this general meeting. I'm joined here by the Chief Financial Officer of Premier African Minerals, Tomas Apetauer, and we have Brendan Roach, the Corporate Secretary, and Wilna Lamb, the Investor Relations Manager, joining us remotely as well. Without any further ado, I would like to proceed with the matters of the general meeting. All comments appreciated, believe me. Thank you. Good afternoon again, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the general meeting of Premier African Minerals Limited. I've introduced myself and other members who are present. Any questions from those present?
If not, then I declare that there is a quorum of members present and that we can proceed to the business to be transacted at this meeting. Before proceeding to the formal business of the meeting, are there any questions concerning the proposed resolutions? They were all pretty well laid out in the notice of the meeting. With the consent of the meeting and those present, I will take the notice of the general meeting as read. Is that agreed? Okay. We have approval from that. Okay. Before I put each resolution formally to the vote, those attending will have the opportunity to raise questions in relation to the resolutions. I will now formally propose the resolutions to the meeting.
The full text of each of the resolutions is set out in the notice of the meeting, copy of which has been available for download on the company's webpage, and was issued on 3rd of September . If anybody else can't hear me very well, I will speak a little bit louder. Okay, thank you very much. We have our record that we have not received any declaration of letters of representation. Resolutions one to four are proposed as special resolutions. In order for each resolution to be passed, more than 3/4 of the votes cast in respect to that resolution must be in favor of the resolution. Resolution one, to approve for the period commencing 24 months following the date of this general meeting, [i.e. the period].
The disapplication of the preemption provisions set out in Regulation 1.5 of the company's articles of association in relation to the issue of or the grant of any right to subscribe or convert any security into up to 58,630,740,625 ordinary shares and to authorize the directors of the company to issue or grant any right to subscribe or any convert or for or convert any security into shares in accordance with the provisions of this resolution so that the company may make offers and enter into agreements during this period which would or might require shares to be allotted or rights to subscribe for or convert other securities into shares to be granted after the period ends. Any questions from those attending in relation to the resolution? We have a negative. I propose resolution one.
As Chairman, I hold four proxies totaling 10,560,904,299 votes in favor, 252,222,206 votes against, 733 votes discretionary, 26,649 votes withheld. Total votes cast, including those withheld, 10,813,126,238. Votes in favor, including discretion, is 10,560,905,032. That is 97.67% of the votes cast in favor. I declare resolution one passed as a special resolution of the company.
Resolution two, conditional on the approval of resolution one, the approval for a period commencing 24 months following the date of this general meeting, the settlement period, the disapplication of the preemption provisions set out in Regulation 1.5 of the company's articles of association in relation to the issue of or the grant of any right to subscribe for or convert any security into, up to a further 5,397,091,386 ordinary shares, and to authorize the directors of the company to issue such number of shares as they may determine in favor of J.R. Goddard Contracting (Private) Limited in settlement of amounts owing by the company in respect of mutual release and settlement agreement entered into on or around the 9th of January 2026. Further, China Zenith Capital Limited in settlement of amounts owing in respect to their outstanding fees as announced on the 8th of August 2024.
In each case, on such terms and at such issue price as the directors may determine, subject to the aggregate number of shares issued pursuant to this resolution not exceeding 5,397,091,386 ordinary shares. Are there any questions in relation to this resolution from those present? No queries. Thank you very much. I now propose resolution two. Resolution one having been duly approved, as Chairman, I hold four proxies totaling 10,600,892,900 votes in favor, 211,975,883 votes against, 733 votes discretionary, 283,371 votes withheld. Total votes cast, excluding withheld, 10,812,869,516. Votes in favor, including discretion, 10,600,893,633, being 98.04% of the total votes cast. I declare resolution two passed as a special resolution of the company. Moving on to resolution three.
Conditional on the approval of resolution two, the approval for a period commencing 24 months following the date of this general meeting, the conversion period, the disapplication of the preemption provisions set out in Regulation 1.5 of the company's articles of association in relation to the issue of or the grant of any right to subscribe for or convert any security into, up to a further 8,566,923,923 ordinary shares. And to authorize the directors of the company to issue such number of shares in favor of Canmax in accordance with their conversion rights as notified on the 24th December 2024. Any questions in relation to this resolution? None to be recorded. I now propose resolution three. Resolution two having been duly approved, as Chairman, I hold four proxies totaling 10,542,980,359 votes in favor, 269,888,424 votes against, 733 votes discretionary, 283,371 votes withheld. Total votes cast, excluding withheld, 10,812,869,516.
Votes in favor, including discretion, 10,542,981,092, or 97.5% of the total votes cast in favor. I declare resolution three passed as a special resolution of the company. Resolution four, that the issued ordinary shares of no par value each in the capital of the company, that is existing ordinary shares, be and are hereby consolidated into new ordinary shares of no par value each in the capital of the company. New ordinary shares on the basis of one ordinary share for every 10 existing ordinary shares held prior to the passing of this resolution, having the same rights and being subject to the same restrictions as the existing ordinary shares. Any questions in relation to the resolution? None here. I now propose resolution four. As Chairman, I hold four proxies totaling 10,557,012,417 votes in favor, 255,775,588 votes against, 733 votes discretionary, 364,149 votes withheld. Total votes cast, excluding withheld, 10,812,788,738.
Votes in favor, including discretion, 10,557,013,150, or 97.63% of the total votes cast I hereby declare resolution four passed as a special resolution of the company. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's formal business. On behalf of the board, I'd like to thank you all for your attendance. I declare this general meeting closed. As we've proposed, we will hold the call open to questions via the Q&A, which is at the top of the Teams if people can find it. I know people seem to have been struggling a little bit. If people can see the Teams page, on the top line, there are items such as Chat, Q&A, People, Raise a hand, et cetera. If people can find the Q&A, then we will take questions. O ne moment. Okay. I know there have been some questions raised during the handling of the resolutions.
A lot of those just revolve around our plans. I think in the notice of the meeting and the RNS associated with it, our plans were pretty well laid out in terms of the intention to raise a certain amount of money following this general meeting based on this application of the shares. Our plan is very much to still look at restarting the processing plant and running it for an extended period of time compared to what has been done previously. The team on site are all revved up, ready to go. The first thing we need is a little bit of cash for our mining contractor. He needs to complete the mining activities in order to give us a stockpile of sufficient capacity for us to be able to run the processing plant continuously for what we want, which is a period of 25- 30 days.
People are aware that previous runnings of this modified plant, which includes the modifications we have done upfront to simplify the processing plant, and of course, the addition of the new spodumene flotation plant. We did run it, as people are aware, for about one week, five to seven days in June. Which, whilst it showed very, very favorable results in terms of getting very close to producing on-spec material, it just wasn't quite long enough to show that, A, we could definitely achieve the specification without a problem, and that we could achieve it consistently. We do know from the results that we're definitely very, very positively and firmly behind the processing plant as it's now configured, especially very much in favor of utilizing the new spodumene flotation plant. It has definitely demonstrated its ability to be able to produce on-spec.
Hence the need now to actually maximize the run of mine stockpile, to then be able to run for an extended period with the engineers on site from the suppliers of the new spodumene flotation plant to help us in really guaranteeing that we can produce on-spec consistently, and run the plant on a really reliable basis. The simplifications to the upfront part of the processing plant, such as we've taken the sorters out of the process line-up. We've removed the thickener, which we believe was giving us more problems than it was actually worth. Has simplified the operation of the plant considerably and improved the reliability of the plant. We're still firmly behind that intent. The budgeting we've done based on the monies which we think we can raise, and again, as you're aware, this is all very much dependent on the share price.
We worked enough money to be able to say we had to satisfy certain requirements, including payment of our own staff on site. They're all very supportive of the project to want to see it succeed. But we do have to make sure that they can provide bread and butter on the tables of their homes, as well as support us in the field when we come to operate the processing plant. In addition to satisfying our own staff, we need to satisfy the mining contractor so that he has the ability and he has the supply of diesel to be able to provide us the additional tonnage we need to maximize the amount of material on the stockpile before we start running.
We have also some additional plant reagents and some other creditor payments which we need to make to put ourselves in a very sound position, such that by sometime towards the end of October, we will be in a position to start operating the processing plant. We intend to run, like I say, for a period of 25- 30 days. We will keep people very much attuned of how progress is being made when we do start the operations. This should give us indeed, as the question coming through there, a product which we can sell. As obviously people know, we have an offtake agreement with Canmax, and we'll be subject to the provisions of that. But we do intend that during the course of this extended run period in November, we will be producing a saleable product. That is very much our intention.
That is very much where we believe we will be when we operate the plant for an extended period. The team at site are very much behind us being able to achieve this and very supportive. Funding will be based in the next couple of weeks regarding the movement of some of these shares. Unfortunately, it is the only source of funding which we can really realize at the moment. I know it's been a question on many people's lips over the months and even over the 12 months since I've been here. Are additional sources of funding available? People are very much aware, we've made it common knowledge that we are talking to people such as Glencore regarding a longer-term investment in the project. We have other similar companies to Glencore, also very interested.
I've even met some people in Johannesburg this week while I've been here. But any of those major investments are based on us having a processing plant which is producing an on-spec product, which is saleable. Just so that people are aware that obviously we've been to the marketplace and looked at the opportunity for raising money through conventional loans and other methods. A lot of those are dependent on us providing some form of surety, which is very tricky for us since the surety is really tied up with Canmax. It makes it very difficult for us to provide any assurances for anybody else. We are continuously looking at alternative sources. There are people talking to us at various levels about opportunities, about involvement, about joint ventures, and that's not just for Zulu, it also includes our other assets as well.
All of those could be considered as potential sources of income and as an alternative to us having to raise more money through this equity, which is obviously not the way we want to do it. We admire and are thankful, obviously, for the support of the shareholders. We know we've been terribly dilutive, and that includes over the period I've been involved with the company. It's definitely not something which we want to do. But the objective is, and the only way really forward for us, is to get this project and this processing plant into production, look at generating some revenue, and being able to actually then start generating real value in the company. That is how people will start beginning to get the return which you all deserve.
Well, we've got to get this plant running, basically, for any of the stakeholders to actually be able to benefit. Yeah, okay. There was a question come in regarding the material we produced in June. Is it really a saleable product? We have got people who will take that material. It won't be at a full price for an on-spec SC6-type specification, but what we intend to produce by the end of the run in November is certainly going to be saleable on-spec material. Saleable at the full market price for an SC6 product. We're very confident in being able to do that. RHA is a question. We have been talking for some time with various people regarding different options regarding RHA. All of these options do, of course, include the involvement, ultimately, of the government of Zimbabwe, being they are still a 51% shareholder.
We have indications that there are negotiations possible. We're waiting to conclude some formal arrangements with the government at the moment. But in the meantime, we are talking to two or three different parties involving looking at different options of a way forward for RHA and getting it back into production. It wouldn't take an awful lot of money to get the RHA back into production, but one of the major stumbling blocks is going to be overcoming this shareholder imbalance, and any new shareholder, any new investor coming in obviously wants that current imbalance to be resolved. So there are extensive negotiations ongoing regarding RHA. But it's been a long time since RHA was put into care and maintenance. Yep. Yeah, I know that there's a comment there regarding sell what you can.
We have been offered cash for a couple of our assets, but that sort of cash sale would not go very far in terms of what we need to do with something like Zulu. We have considered seriously various offers that have been made for some of the assets, to the point that we called a strategic meeting of the management and board of Premier African Minerals about two weeks ago, which we had that very simple discussion, "Guys, what do we want to do? Are we just going to sell off our assets for a bit of cash that really does nothing to help us get Zulu back on the road, and doesn't really pay any bills hardly, and then just lose the assets?
Or do we want to try and keep these assets with a view to turning them around and getting them into production to actually generate some more revenue for the stakeholders in PREM?" That's the only way forward as we see it, and we agreed that, look, we want to be a mining company. We don't want to be here just shifting assets and making a little bit of money on the side. There's been a major investment, as you know, into RHA, and we would like to see some sort of return on that as in terms of some of the other assets as well. We're into trying to realize value. Our first stage, obviously, is Zulu. That's where we believe we will get the biggest return for any investment made in terms of income.
The other projects we're also looking at the same time as bringing Zulu into production. Everything is being considered at the moment, and we are continuing to talk to potential investors, large and small, about the future of the company. I know this is a lot of stuff which you've probably heard before. We can't help but mention the truth, is that the thing is we need money to be able to make money, and raising money through the issue of the equity at the moment is the only way we can do it. We do have the ongoing support of Canmax, and that will continue. We're continuously working with Canmax, and we will continue to do so at this point in time. As people know, they are keen to either get the offtake or to have somebody negotiate with them regarding their position.
There are ongoing discussions. Sorry. In running the processing plant now, in running the processing plant in June, we identified very quickly within a couple of days of operation that we were getting close to and even achieving at times, SC6 specification concentrates. The unfortunate thing was, at the time, we were not able to run the plant sufficiently long to get any low-grade material out of the plant. We'd used some low-grade material initially to be able to commission the processing, the re-upgraded processing plant, and some of that material was still going through when we had to shut down.
We had to shut down simply because we had not had enough money to build a large enough stockpile of run of mine material, with the mining contractor, which is why we made the significant decision that the next time we run, we have to have material on the stockpile that gives us the ability to run for as close to 30 days as we possibly can. During that time, it gives us the opportunity to both, A, achieve the specification, and two, to achieve it consistently over a prolonged period of time. We do intend to continue mining during the time which we operate the plant to try and keep the plant going for as long as possible. How long we will be able to mine for depends on the availability of funding, obviously, and it depends on the operation of the plant.
We are confident that we will be able to produce on-spec SC6, saleable SC6. If it takes us one week or two weeks, I can't tell you, but we are confident that we will be able to do it. That's as confident as I can be, and the team on site feel very much the same way. That's all we can do, is have faith in the ability of the plant we have got installed there now to produce on-spec material. If we are successful, if we are managing to produce on-spec material, that becomes immediately saleable, which means that the need for further dilution, as the question comes up, the further use of equity as a form of raising funds, will hopefully not be the case on a standalone basis. There becomes then available alternative methods of funding, which we will be able to rely on.
How quickly it will take us to secure alternative funding? Again, that's a question which is as long as a piece of string. We don't know exactly. Could be a month, it could be two months. We will certainly be doing everything once we've demonstrated that the plant can produce, we're doing everything we can to get people on board with alternative methods of funding to stop any potential future dilution insofar as is possible. I'm just going to open up my Q&A and see what's coming up. We have no direct plans at the moment regarding which port we're going to use. I think, Byron, it's just going to be a pleasure to actually have the ability to export something. Obviously, there's the issue regarding the export of concentrates for Zimbabwe, which we are addressing.
There are many other people in Zimbabwe producing concentrates, so obviously in the same boat as we are. Obviously, if we do produce, we have a responsibility to export it. Exactly the route, yet to be decided. It's not something which we've had the pleasure of being able to look at in any detail, so I apologize, we can't actually answer that question in full at this point in time. As I say, we have been talking to other potential off-takers and significant players in the field, and people are aware of our involvement and discussions previously, our letters with Glencore in particular. There has been a release, I think, regarding the options. I think there's something more to come out on the options. Look, guys. There's a question regarding Goddard and the amount of funds and everything else regarding him.
People are aware of the agreements which we've reached with J.R.G. in the past. You'll notice in these resolutions now, one of them is in terms of settling Goddard's account through the issuance of shares. We've done some of that previously, and on the basis of that, there are ongoing discussions regarding updates to the agreements with J.R. Goddard regarding the settlement of his outstanding payments. That is progressing. We're obviously progressing various other creditors as well. We're in constant contact with them. I won't go into details about exactly how much we intend to raise with the first placement, and that's obviously very much dependent on where the share price sits at the time. To be able to run the plants, I think we've indicated in the RNS that was issued earlier in terms of what the budgets are for going forward.
We need about GBP 4 million, we believe, to get the plant into operation and restarted and run it now. That's a starting point. I think we're seeing a lot of the questions now coming through. Just on the Q&A. I believe there's a question coming in about the Xinhai plant. It's a standard, some people would call a Chinese-style plant. It uses gravity flow between the different cells. It's got standard rougher, cleaner, and scavenger sections to it. Flow between the different sections is gravity. Each cell is agitated mechanically. One of the big significant differences. There are two significant differences between this Xinhai plant and, let's say, the ENPROTEC non-standard type spodumene flotation plant, which we had received from Stark when the plant was built.
The Xinhai plant, in comparison, firstly, does not have the massive recirculation that the ENPROTEC plant had, whereby a lot of power was being put into the cells, which we don't believe was necessarily helpful to the ability of the cells to produce product. The air injection into the ENPROTEC cells was high pressure, low volume. One of the first things we noticed from the Xinhai plant, apart from the fact that it's simple mechanically, doesn't have any recirculation, just a limited power input to enable you to produce a nice, gentle froth, was that the amount of air being put in there was very high volume and very low pressure. So instead of having an air compressor pumping in high pressure air at low quantity into the cells, we've got a big blower blowing vast quantities of air at very low pressure into the cells.
The effect of this is, as one of the technical experts from Glencore said when he visited the plant, and he's been there in July again this year as well, and he's seen the new installation, is that the one way to float spodumene is soft and gentle, not in the aggressive way which we felt was happening in the ENPROTEC cells. I think that is a significant difference which we're seeing. We're using the same reagents as we were before, but it's just the physical activity in these cells with the different agitation, the lack of recirculation, and the change in the air volumes and pressures just means that the flotation process in those cells is soft and gentle, and not violent and aggressive. It's giving time for the froth to form and to overflow in the way it should. It was looking very satisfactory.
The commissioning engineers from the supplier were looking quite happy with the way things were going, and as soon as we start really getting to the point of running the plant, again, they will be back on site to help us with the optimization and getting into full production for at least another month. That is where we are in terms of the new plant. It was a question that came up from somebody. Gentlemen, ladies, I think that about wraps up the Q&A we can do. I think very much the similar questions are coming up on a recurring basis. I hope we have been able to answer them as much as possible. I know to a lot of you, it is the same old.
Sorry for that, but there is a sort of a stuck record to some extent which we have to keep playing, and that is that we need money to be able to get this thing into production, to be able to make some money and hopefully repay everybody who has been a stakeholder in this project for a long time. I thank you very much indeed for your indulgence and I look forward to a very positive future. One of which I am personally very keen to see come to its full fruition. Thank you very much and goodbye.