Tharisa Minerals is buying the fleet of equipment and employing the staff deployed by MCC Contracts at its chrome and platinum group metal mine near Brits, as the company takes full control of a maturing asset. Avoiding the high up-front cost of buying a mining fleet and employing a large staff complement at the start of the project, Tharisa opted to use a contractor to start its opencast mine. Now the mine has been in operation and is at steady state production, the company has opted to take a firmer hold of the operational side of the business. Setting its sights on 1.4-million tonnes of chrome concentrate and 150,000oz of platinum group metals this year, Tharisa said taking in-house control of mining would allow it to hit that target. It had said in May it intended embarking on this course of action. "The contractor mining model was appropriate while the Tharisa Mine was in development since it reduced the upfront capital spend on a fleet, enabled Tharisa Minerals to understand i...

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