Canadian miner Imperial Metals has completed a non-brokered private placement and secured C$16.8m ($12.4m) in gross proceeds.
As part of the placement, the company issued seven million of its shares at C$2.4 ($1.77) apiece. It will use the proceeds to facilitate the development and operations of its Red Chris copper and gold mine, as well as for general working capital uses.
Of the seven million shares, 3.5 million shares were acquired by N Murray Edwards for an aggregate amount of C$8.4m.
The directors and officers of the company bought 753,000 shares totalling C$1.8m, which constituted 60.8% of proceeds from the placement.
Red Chris mine is a copper and gold mine located 80km south of Dease Lake in British Columbia, Canada.
The property encompasses 23,142ha of land and includes 77 mineral tenues, five of which have mining leases.
This mine is jointly owned by Newcrest with a 70% interest, with Imperial Metals owning the remaining 30%.
Imperial Metals sold its stake to Newcrest in August 2019 for $804m and have formed a joint venture to operate the mine. Newcrest will act as the operator for the project.
The Red Chris mine has a potential of 406 million tonnes (mt) in total ore production, with 4.9 million ounces of gold and 1.5mt of copper. The average annual gold production is estimated to be 158,000oz and copper production of 48.5 kilotonnes over a 31-year life of mine.
As per the companies’ estimates, the total capital expenditure on the project is C$2.6bn. The internal rate of return is 17% and the net present value (NPV) of the project is C$2.3bn, with a payback period of 3.2 years.
