Copper/gold exploration and development company Bezant on Thursday announced that it had raised £800 000 before expenses through a subscription and placing of shares at 0.36p each.

The price represented a discount of about 17.2% to the closing mid-market price of 0.43p a share on Wednesday.

The company said that it would use the net proceeds from the fundraising to progress the Mankayan project, located on the Island of Luzon in the Philippines, including commissioning a further update or optimisation of the historical third-party scoping study, together with on-site community development work and the necessary activities to advance a drilling programme targeting resource confirmation and potential extension. 

Bezant said that the Mankayan project, which it believed was a forerunner in the prospective global copper/gold arena, would be enhanced following completion of the planned work programme.

A January 2011 conceptual study estimated probable ore reserves of 189-million tonnes at 0.46% copper and 0.49 g/t gold, resulting in total recoverable metal reserves of 811 000 t of copper and 2.21-million ounces of gold. The total mining inventory is estimated at 390-million tonnes of ore and has an average grade of 0.38% copper and 0.42 g/t gold, equating to about 1.4-million tonnes of copper and 3.9-million ounces of gold.

The company is also reassessing the independent conceptual study and reports last updated in 2014, which suggested that the Mankayan project had a potential post-tax internal rate of return of 21% and post-tax net present value of about $793-million at an 8% discount rate, with total post-tax net cash flows of about $3.7-billion.

Bezant would also use a portion of the net proceeds on activities aimed at increasing the confidence in, and decreasing risk at, its Eureka project, in Argentina.  The balance of the net proceeds would be used for general working capital purposes.