Royal Bafokeng Platinum (RBPlat) reported a full-year profit yesterday and said it had secured a deal for Impala Platinum Holdings (Implats) to mine part of its reserves to boost its revenue.

At a results presentation yesterday, RBPlat – of which Anglo Platinum owns 12.6 percent – announced that it had secured a 30-year mining arrangement with Implats that would boost revenue.

RBPlat, a black-controlled, mid-tier producer of platinum group metals, said Implats would mine the ore body from a section of its Boschkoppie reserves for a 30-year period.

Under the agreement with Implats, RBPlat will receive a royalty of 17.5 percent of revenue from sales in 2012. The company said that all mining, safety, health and environmental risks would be borne by Implats. The two firms agreed to a similar deal last year for Implats to mine other parts of RBPlat’s reserves and give 15 percent of the revenue to RBPlat.

Implats last year offered to buy RBPlat’s Rasimone mine, but the bid was snubbed by Anglo Platinum, which owns a 33 percent stake in the mine.

Martin Prinsloo, the chief financial officer at RBPlat, said the deal with Implats would have benefits. “We believe this transaction makes sense, and we believe that it has a lot of potential,” he said.

RBPlat will use the income to help fund its Styldrift 1 expansion project, which aims to boost production to 611 000 ounces of platinum group metals a year by the end of 2017, from 288 100 ounces last year.

The project would cost less than the last estimate of R11.8 billion, Prinsloo said, declining to be more specific.

Implats would access the ore from the northern parts of RBPlat’s Boschkoppie reserves from Implat’s own Number 20 shaft, Prinsloo said. There was scope to do further deals in the future, he added.

Nico Muller, RBPlat’s chief operating officer, said about R900 million in capital expenditure would be allocated to Styldrift this year, where production would commence in 2015, and full production would start in 2017. Initially 500 000 ounces of the metal would be produced in 2015, with output expected to rise to 2.7 million ounces, he said.

The project will create between 1 800 and 2 000 jobs.

A Johannesburg-based analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the agreement with Implats was a step in the right direction, saying RBPlats would make money quickly. He said the reserve where Implats would mine was “awkwardly shaped”.

“They couldn’t put up proper infrastructure because the shape of the reserve is funny, it is a triangle, and you can’t further develop it, they couldn’t put in proper infrastructure.”

Abri du Plessis, the chief investment officer at Gryphon Asset Management, said: “Nothing specific worrying (about the results), but a lot of commodity shares are down on global market sentiments with the downgrade of Greece (on Monday), not so much company specifics.”

RBPlat said its full-year headline earnings a share stood at R1.92, compared with a headline loss a share of R10.72 in 2009, boosted by higher metal prices and output. It said a market deficit should support operations this year.

The company said a change in control and accounting practices also impacted favourably on the results. Full-year sales rose to R2.11bn from R1.16bn the previous year.

RBPlats fell 1.41 percent to close at R62.95 yesterday. - Dineo Matomela and Reuters and Bloomberg