Overview
- A mud rush on February 17 trapped miners and killed five, and the site was placed into provisional liquidation on March 3 after a costly recovery and operational collapse.
- On July 27 the Northern Cape High Court put Ekapa Minerals into business rescue and appointed an interim practitioner while Ekapa Resources remains in provisional liquidation.
- The joint provisional liquidators warned in early August that an Eskom disconnection could stop 114 boreholes and shaft pumps and flood the underground workings within 48 hours, but Moneyweb reported that Eskom had not cut power and maintenance continued.
- Liquidators say the rescue plan that relies on processing old surface tailings is commercially unviable because dumps yield only four to five carats per 100 tonnes and the plant needs about R30 million a month in electricity while care-and-maintenance costs run about R400,000 a day; Numsa counters that roughly R400 million in intercompany receivables could fund a scaled-down restart to save about 500 jobs.
- Authorities warn that uncontrolled flooding could mobilise oil, diesel and other contaminants into groundwater, threatening local agriculture and leaving long-term remediation costs and the loss of irreplaceable mining infrastructure.