Solomons nickel prospector confident despite court ruling

Transcript

Australian miner Axiom KB is confident of recovering the rights to mine nickel deposits in Solomon Islands after a court ruling dissolved the company's prospecting licence.

The appeal court ruling, delivered yesterday in Honiara, quashed the process by which the Takata (Kolosori) customary land was originally registered, returning it to its original customary land status.

This rendered null and void the freehold lease and licence which Axiom had over the property.

Axiom chief executive Ryan Mount however told Koroi Hawkins the ruling also negatively impacted on the first respondent Sumitomo Metal Mining Solomon Islands Ltd.

RYAN MOUNT: It essentially said a few things. In regards to Sumitomo it said that they, they shouldn't have been awarded or allowed to enter the international tender. Because they had more than three prospecting licences prior to tendering and there is a law in the Solomon Islands that you can't have more than three prospecting licenses without proceeding to mining. In regards to Axiom they said that first of all in regards to the land which was registered land and Axiom had a lease on the land that the land needs to be reverted back to customary land because the process in which it went through the government department to be registered was not correct and so it was reverted back to customary land. Now as such since Axiom dealt with the registered landowners therefore our prospecting license falls away and has been extinguished. So basically there is customary land with no mineral rights on them.

KOROI HAWKINS: So where does that place your company in terms of going forward? I understand that there is investments already on the ground and put into prospecting.

RM: Correct we have invested a lot both in the ground into our operations here and obviously through this litigation process. So we have reapplied for the project, there was no adverse findings against Axiom in this ruling and so we have reapplied for the project and we have lodged that application.

KH: Where does that place Sumitomo in terms of its position?

RM: In regards to them reapplying it is going to be up to them. However the court of appeal were very clear in regards to the three prospecting licence embargo. That if they have more than three prospecting licences you cannot apply for another without proceeding to mining. And so they made clear that from the time that they entered the tender they had more than three prospecting licences. And as it stands at the moment I am aware that they do have three or more prospecting licences. So I am unsure of how they are going to proceed from here.

KH: And I understand you put a trading halt on your ASX shares over, before prior to this judgement what does this now mean in terms of investor confidence in your project?

RM: Okay we did put a trading halt because we did have a court ruling and it is important that we have a orderly informed market. We are going to address this court ruling which is an 80 odd page ruling and we are going to take our time and make sure that we are clear on what these orders mean and once we have that clarified from our lawyers we will be making a statement to the courts but obviously this will set us back a few months at the least at the moment. However we feel relatively comfortable considering the support especially just recently we are receiving from the community on Isabel and from the initial comments from our interaction with government that we will be reapplying and that we will be successful in doing so.