JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The requisite majority of Stillwater shareholders in the US have approved the acquisition by Sibanye of the entire issued share capital of Stillwater Mining Company.

The voting took place a day after Sibanye shareholders gave their overwhelming approval to the transaction that is expected to close on May 4.

The approval of both sets of shareholders has “pleased” Sibanye CEO Neal Froneman, who said he is looking forward to welcoming and engaging with Stillwater management and employees and beginning the process of integrating the operations into the Sibanye group.

A circular containing the terms and details of the upcoming rights offer will be issued in mid-May.

JSE- and NYSE-listed Sibanye entered into a definitive agreement to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Stillwater Mining Company of the US for $2.2-billion in early December.

The $18-a-share offer represented a premium of 23% to Stillwater’s prior day closing share price, and 20% to Stillwater’s 20-day volume-weighted average closing share price.

At the time, the Stillwater board recommended that shareholders voted in favour of it, while Sibanye calculated that the acquisition would be value accretive through the addition to its portfolio of two producing platinum group metals (PGM) mines in Montana, with high-grade reserves that support more than a quarter century of mine life, plus organic growth potential through extensive regional resources.

Stillwater will give Sibanye a mine-to-market PGM business that has a metallurgical processing complex, a PGM recycling operation and the near-term Blitz growth project.

The existing underground mines, which have been in operation since 1986 and 2002, were poised to produce between 535 000 oz and 545 000 oz of two element (2E) PGM in fiscal year 2016, at a total cash cost net of credits of $430/oz to $455/oz.

Each mine has its own milling and concentrator infrastructure on site.

Development of the Blitz project is expected to be completed in early 2018 and ramp up to full production of between 270 000 oz and 330 000 oz 2E PGM by 2021/2022, with lower cash cost an ounce than currently at the existing Stillwater and East Boulder mines.

Stillwater’s proven and probable reserves consist of 39.4-million tonnes of ore with an average grade of 15.6 g/t, or 19.9-million ounces of contained 2E PGM.

The proven and probable reserves are 78% palladium and 22% platinum, and support a mine life of more than 25 years.

The Columbus metallurgical complex, which is capable of providing smelting and refining processes for mine concentrates, produces a PGM filter cake that is shipped to a third-party precious metal refinery.

The recycling operations recover PGMs from mainly automotive catalytic converters.

The complex has continued to expand its recycling volumes, with a record 175 000 oz of PGM processed in the third quarter of 2016.

The net asset value of Stillwater is $916-million and the profit attributable to Stillwater for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 is $4-million.

Last year Sibanye took over the ownership, control and management of the Rustenburg Operations from Anglo American Platinum’s Rustenburg Platinum Mines, which include Bathopele, Siphumelele, Khomanani, Thembelani and Khuseleka, as well as two concentrating plants, an on-site chrome recovery plant, the Western Limb Tailings Retreatment Plant and associated surface infrastructure, for at least R4.5-billion.

Earlier in 2016, it also completed the acquisition of Aquarius Platinum, which owns stakes in the Kroondal platinum mine, in Rustenburg, and the Mimosa joint venture with Impala Platinum, in Zimbabwe.