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Abdullah Saeed Al Thani, Chairman of Thani Emirates Resource Holdings; Dr Roric Smith, Senior Vice President, Global Greenfields Exploration, Anglo Gold Ashanti Ltd (right), and Richard Camball, CEO at a press conference. Image Credit: Pankaj Sharma/Gulf News

Dubai: Thani Group, a diversified business conglomerate, is looking to go public in the next three years, according to CEO Richard Camball.

"We're looking to put our company in the public domain. Our business will be public, our holding companies will be still private," said Camball.

The company operates in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.

"Our focus today is in mineral resources," said Camball. In the sector they've seen year on year growth in their investment of around 30 to 40 per cent.

Thani Emirates Resources Holdings, the mineral resources business of the Thani Group, recently signed a joint venture with AngloGold Ashanti to explore, develop and operate gold, precious and base metals mines in the Mena region. The alliance has moved to develop a series of joint venture projects at various stages of exploration in countries including Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Saudi Arabia. They currently have 17 to 20 projects and they're looking at conducting exploration in a further 27 countries.

In Egypt, progress has been made at the Hodine prospect where there has been a discovery of significant gold mineralisation. The joint venture in Eritrea has held two exploration licences since March 2010 while the joint venture in Ethiopia has led to new discoveries.

In Saudi Arabia, they have completed project generation work and opportunity reviews across the entire Arabian shield which will result in over 3,000 square kilometres of exploration licence applications being submitted this month.