MRC in legal dispute

Mineral sands developer Mineral Commodities has become the subject of action in the High Court of South Africa, after a dispute over a garnet deposit at its Tormin operations.

An application to the court has been made by Blastrite, a family-owned manufacturer of granular abrasives, to prevent MRC subsidiary Mineral Sands Resources dealing with any other entity in relation to a potential beach garnet deposit.

The order would also prevent MRS renewing an existing offtake agreement.

MRC will appear to oppose the application on Thursday, and the company said the application was an abuse of court process.

Blastrite is South Africa’s largest producer of materials for surface preparation, with four processing facilities in the country, and previously acted as project manager of the Tormin mineral sands operation.

That agreement was discontinued in the September quarter.

MRC produced 182,539 tonnes of garnet in the nine months to the end of September.

Tormin is MRC’s major asset, and the company operates an offtake agreement with garnet miner GMA Garnet.

Mineral Commodities was steady at 11 cents, on low volume, after starting the year on 18 cents per share.