PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Metalicity has appointed Tom Panoulias as president and CEO of subsidiary Kimberley Mining, to lead the company through its initial public offering (IPO) on the TSX-V in the September quarter of this year.

Metalicity in March announced plans to list its Admiral Bay zinc project, in Western Australia, on the TSX-V through a Vancouver-based subsidiary.

Kimberley Mining was targeting a C$30-million capital raising on listing on the TSX-V to progress the Admiral Bay project through a prefeasibility study (PFS) and towards production.

Metalicity director Matt Gauci said on Wednesday that Panoulias was instrumental in the recent North American institutional placement for Metalicity, as was well acquainted with the Admiral Bay zinc project, the Kimberley Mining board and Metalicity’s institutional investors.

“Panoulias’ mining and capital markets background adds significant experience to the recently appointed board of Kimberley Mining, while building on the management team to lead the company through the IPO process,” Gauci said.

Panoulias has over 15 years' experience in the capital markets, and previously worked for Echelon Wealth Partners, Fraser Mackenzie and Dundee Capital Markets. He holds an BComm honours degree from the University of Toronto and is a member of the Canadian Institution of Mining and Metallurgy and the Toronto Society of Financial Analysts.

An October PFS into the Admiral Bay project confirmed that the project could support both a direct shipping ore (DSO) operation and a combined DSO and concentrate project.

The PFS indicated that a standalone DSO operation would be feasible with the current project knowledge and testwork, while the combined DSO and concentrate model also preserved expansion optionality to a larger concentrate model and was feasible.

Metalicity will now undertake work on the Stage 2 PFS, including continued testwork to confirm the ore sorting rejection rates expected for DSO, additional resource drilling, evaluating the feasibility of a concentrator plant to increase the available tonnage to be mined post DSO, the staged expansion approach from 0.5-million tonnes a year to 3-million tonnes a year, and mine design aspects.