Shaft Sinkers Holding, the South African developer of vertical and decline shafts for underground mines and infrastructure, has announced its intention to list on the London Stock Exchange on December 23rd. The group has published an application prospectus  and has placed 24,680,734 new ordinary shares, raising approximately £30.6 million before expenses. Shaft Sinkers estimates that it will have a market capitalisation of £58.9 million on admission on the basis of a total of 47,500,000 shares issued.

Alon Davidov, CEO of Shaft Sinkers, said: “We are delighted to bring Shaft Sinkers to the London Stock Exchange and are excited by the prospects this will open up to us. We have worked hard to create a leader in the sinking of shafts for the mining industry. The listing will allow us to build on our strengths and expand into new industries and geographies requiring our expertise, particularly the CIS and India.” Some £24.1 million of the placing proceeds will be used to fund the acquisition of stakes from minority shareholders, but the remaining proceedswill be used to recondition winders (about £2 million) and to fund expected future project expenditure (£1.5 million).

Shaft Sinkers specialises in the sinking of particularly deep and/or wide vertical shafts, decline shafts and the development of other underground infrastructure such as pump house stations. It is currently engaged in seven of the nine vertical shafts deeper than 350 m being sunk in South Africa. Customers include Impala Platinum in South Africa, OJSC MHK EuroChem in Russia and Teesta Urja in India. It has sunk the deepest ever man and material South African shaft at 3.13 km and in 49 years has sunk in aggregate over 165 km of vertical shafts worldwide and excavated over 400 km of tunnelling.