General Mining raises cash for Mt Cattlin

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed General Mining Corporation has raised some A$7.3-million through a share placement, providing the company with sufficient cash to complete its initial equity and profit earn in at the Mt Cattlin spodumene and tantalum project, in Western Australia.

General Mining would place more than 40.5-million shares, at a price of 18c each, to a number of domestic and international institutional and professional investors, under the company’s current placement capacity.

The placement price represented a 7.7% discount to the company’s previous closing price, and a 3% discount to the 10-day volume weighted average price of Genral Mining shares.

General Mining told shareholders on Thursday that the support received in the placement was a sign of strong support for the company’s planned early 2016 restart of the Mt Cattlin operation,

With the raising now complete, General Mining had sufficient cash to complete its equity purchase in the project by spending A$7-million before the end of March next year, and to cover the anticipated plant optimisation capital and working capital requirements prior to expected positive cashflow from the project.

Based on the current mineral resource and ore reserve estimates at Mt Cattlin, a recently completed independent review estimated that the project could deliver some 11 500 t/y of spodumene over an initial 17-year mine life. The project was estimated to require a capital investment of A$14.7-million to restart and could generate a life-of-mine revenue of A$1.16-billion and a net cash flow of A$526-million.

The project was expected to have a throughput rate of 800 000 t/y and would produce an additional 85 924 t of tantalite.