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TAW - Tawana - Annual General Meeting: Chairman`s address

Release Date: 28/05/2009 08:55
Code(s): TAW
Wrap Text

TAW - Tawana - Annual General Meeting: Chairman`s address Tawana Resources NL (Incorporated in Australia) (Registration number ACN 085 166 721) Share code on the JSE Limited: TAW ISIN: AU000000TAW7 Share code on the Australian Stock Exchange Limited: TAW ISIN: AU000000TAW7 ("Tawana" or "the Company") Tawana Resources N.L. Annual General Meeting Chairman`s Address Welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Tawana Resources. My name is Neil Barrie, and I am the Executive Chairman of the company. It has been an extraordinary year for all world economies and Tawana has had its fair share of testing times, particularly in relation to the ongoing sourcing of capital, the ability to attract satisfactory joint venture partners into our projects and importantly, the need to trim our sails to survive this financial storm. As mentioned in my numerous releases over the past 6 to 9 months, our clear focus has been on attempting to get Kareevlei into trial mining and to capitalise on the significant upside that we feel is inherent in our Orapa tenements in Botswana. We signed a binding agreement in South Africa in October that would see us sell 26% of Kareevlei to earn approximately AUD$1.8M. This capital injection would have certainly allowed us to get Kareevlei going as a trial mine and importantly, recapitalise the company and allow us to turn our attentions to the highly promising Orapa project in Botswana. Unfortunately the purchaser defaulted and we have obtained judgement against them in the High Court of South Africa. We entered into a joint venture in early 2008 with a group in Botswana which was to earn a 51% equity in BK24 by virtue of undertaking significant bulk sampling. We were concerned that the joint venture agreement entered into by previous management was over generous and not tightly performance based. The joint venture partners clearly did not perform and we have moved quickly to secure total ownership of the project by cancelling the joint venture. We are in discussion with numerous parties in South Africa, Botswana and the UK who have expressed interest in participating in this exciting project. In order to trim our sails to meet the economic times, I moved quickly on appointment to the role of Executive Chairman to cut corporate overheads by 95%. This unfortunately has meant that the majority of our South African and all of our Australian employees were made redundant and our expensive head office in Wilson Street with its soil analysis laboratory was leased out to other parties and allowed us to exit from any ongoing financial responsibilities. Most recently, we have been involved in the potential sale of our interest in Rakana our minority coal and manganese exploration interests in South Africa. As you may be aware, our interest in Rakana is held in a joint venture with our Black Empowerment Partners in South Africa and it is felt that a sale of this asset is prudent to allow us to recapitalise your company and move forward. We hope to have this finalised within the next few days. Despite these exceptionally difficult times, I am pleased to report that your company still maintains a suite of quality mineral assets and renewed enthusiasm and focus on the tasks at hand. We remain extremely positive about the potential for Kareevlei. We are aiming to commence trial mining through a joint venture with a group of mining contractors in the near future. We feel it prudent to work with mining contractors as they can bring exceptionally tight economies to projects, thereby substantially reducing our operational and hence financial risk. We believe that Orapa in Botswana is a potential company maker. I am very cognisant that the share price of our company has been under a great deal of pressure for a long time. I hope that our strategies which clearly focus on getting Tawana to a mining house situation will see an improved share market performance and strong capital markets` interest in a company which I believe has outstanding potential. In closing, I would like to sincerely thank my fellow Directors, Brian Phillips, Euan Luff and Nonkqubela Mazwai and our South African subsidiary director Adrian Horwitz for their untiring support and stewardship. We look forward to a much improved 2009. Thank you for your attendance and support. Neil Barrie Executive Chairman 28 May 2009 Sponsor PricewaterhouseCoopers Corporate Finance (Pty) Ltd Date: 28/05/2009 08:55:01 Supplied by www.sharenet.co.za Produced by the JSE SENS Department. The SENS service is an information dissemination service administered by the JSE Limited (`JSE`). The JSE does not, whether expressly, tacitly or implicitly, represent, warrant or in any way guarantee the truth, accuracy or completeness of the information published on SENS. The JSE, their officers, employees and agents accept no liability for (or in respect of) any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential loss or damage of any kind or nature, howsoever arising, from the use of SENS or the use of, or reliance on, information disseminated through SENS.

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