CML welcomes Rockwell Diamonds’ business rescue process

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – C-Rock Mining Limited (CML), the company that brought a provisional liquidation application against three subsidiaries of Rockwell Diamonds, has welcomed the court’s decision to place the subsidiaries under business rescue.

CML had previously applied to have the three subsidiaries – Rockwell Resources, HC van Wyk Diamonds and Saxendrift Mine – placed in interim liquidation, stating that Rockwell owed it some R146-million.

Speaking to Mining Weekly Online in a telephone interview on Tuesday, a CML representative said the business rescue process afforded the contractor a chance to recover some of the money owed to it.

“Our dispute with Rockwell is based on contracts that were signed with them, including work done on earthmoving machines and the construction of the R77-million Wouterspan plant,” the representative said.

This, he noted, has resulted in CML retrenching 300 employees, as it could not pay them. The employees are still awaiting payment.

He added that CML would not have been able to obtain the provisional liquidation order, had its claim not been valid and had there not been any monies outstanding.

Rockwell, which made changes to its senior management at the end of 2016, in March said CML had based its litigation on a service level agreement that it believed, following an internal forensic investigation, had been awarded under “irregular” circumstances.

CML, however, disputes that the contracts were “irregular” and a product of “fraudulent activities”.

“There is nothing there. In their so-called forensic report, Rockwell also mentions that invoices were made out to CML. Those invoices do not exist, they are not in our system,” he stated.