People: Golden gleam for Fleming

April could prove momentous for Adam Fleming, scion of the City banking dynasty and chairman of Jo’burg-quoted Wits Gold. The company, which is sitting on a potential 24 million oz of gold in the Republic’s Witwatersrand Basin, will receive a scoping study on its projects, which he hopes to bring into production in 2015 at the rate of a hefty 150,000 to 250,000 oz a year.

Pointing out that the Witwatersrand has produced 1.5 billion oz of gold so far, ‘a third of all the gold ever produced in the world’, Fleming, who also chairs investment group Fleming Family & Partners, cites an estimated resource of 14 million oz of gold at Wits Gold’s DBM project and 14 million oz at Bloemhoek. He also boasts of potential uranium deposits, currently unfashionable after the Japanese nuclear crisis, of an estimated ten million lbs.

Success at Wits Gold, which now looks more than likely, would mark a spectacular vindication for Fleming, 61, who founded the company eight years ago, when gold was a fraction of its present price and virtually friendless in financial markets. He picked up assets from established companies reluctant to commit big sums to develop them in the prevailing market climate but under pressure from the South African authorities to use their licences or lose them.

Fleming reckons that Wits Gold, now valued at around £156 million, will need around £185 million to move into production. If the projects stack up, with his connections that should prove forthcoming.