KUALA LUMPUR (March 6): Niche Capital Emas Holdings Bhd said it has obtained approval from the Department of Environment of Malaysia (DOE) for its development of gold mining processing facilities on 547 hectares of land in Kelantan.

The DOE approved the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report on an independent assessment of the conditions of the environmental features and their consequent impact from the proposed development and operation of heap leaching and carbon-in leach gold mining processing facilities, Niche Capital said in an exchange filing on Wednesday.

Subsequent to the DOE approval, Niche Capital is required to submit an environmental management plan to the Kelantan state Department of Environment, and a hard rock operation mining scheme to the Kelantan State Department of Mineral and Geoscience, for approvals.

Niche Capital — whose largest shareholders are executive director and CEO Julian Foo Kuan Lin (with a 19.58% stake) and Pang Ling (14.11%) — expects to commence commercial production by the third quarter this year.

The latest development comes nearly three years after Niche Capital’s wholly-owned unit Pembangunan Maju Setia Sdn Bhd entered into a mining joint venture (JV) with Spate Precious Metals Sdn Bhd (PMS) for the gold mining project in Sokor North area in Tanah Merah district.

Spate Precious's sole shareholder was Fong Kok Chin when Niche Capital first announced the JV in April 2021.

Under the JV, Niche Capital is entitled to 70% of the profit sharing arising from the project, while Spate Precious gets the remaining 30%.

PMS has paid RM1.5 million to Spate Precious for the JV and its supplemental agreement.

According to Niche Capital’s diversification circular to shareholders in June 2021, Spate Precious was appointed by Jayamas Mining Sdn Bhd (owned 90% by Wan Muhammad Imran Mohamad Kahiri and 10% by Syed Abdullah Syed Ali Alsagoff) to be the mining contractor for the Sokor North mining area in March 2021.

Jayamas accepted the offer to undertake mining operations at Sokor North from Yayasan Kraftangan Kelantan, which obtained the right to mine from the Kelantan state government in 2018.

Shares of Niche Capital closed unchanged at 13 sen, giving it a market capitalisation of RM176.46 million.