RE: $150m financing within next two weeks18 Apr 2020 06:34
We reported on March 11 that we will need to raise $150 million to complete the feasibility study and for regional exploration and there are no changes to that, so within the next couple of weeks we plan to do a financing he said.
Hofmaier would not comment on whether the financing will be a bought deal, investment by strategic investors, or a private placement.
The completion of a feasibility study for Alpala is likely to experience delays due to travel restrictions and quarantine measures related to the COVID-19 virus outbreak in Ecuador.
Ecuador has been the worst hit country in South America and so we are missing some inputs due to our reduced activities [on the ground] such as environmental monitoring, land acquisition, studies for tailings and geotechnical holes, he said.
The November 2019 PEA outlined an average of 810,000 tonnes per year of concentrate in the first 15 years of production from late 2025 grading 28.2% copper, 22.1 grams per tonne gold and 65.7g/t silver containing 230,000t of copper in concentrate, 580,000 ounces gold and 1.7Moz silver.
Hofmaier was confident, however, that the company would be able to put a project financing plan in place this year given the overwhelmingly positive https://www.mining-journal.com/capital-markets/news/1385058/solgold-receives-interest-received-for-alpala-concentrate expressions of interest it has received from smelters and traders for the copper-gold concentrates the mine is expected to produce.
Not a single expression of interest had worse terms than we put in the PEA [preliminary economic assessment] so we know the market really wants this product. We will take a balanced approach between traders and smelters. The offers of some smelters have attractive funding attached. It is very clean with low levels of deleterious elements and the high gold content and long mine life mean it can be an important part of their smelter feed for decades, he said.
Hofmaier said he expected to respond to short-listed companies next week and enter into more detailed conversations with the aim of receiving memoranda of understandings. However, completion of this step will be difficult to achieve until travel restrictions in Europe and Asia are lifted.
We can do a lot with conference calls but as these are essentially partnerships we have to go and meet people, especially in Asia and the three major European smelters, he said.
Shares in SolGold are trading at C35, valuing the company at $673 million.