JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Australian strategic metals company TNG has secured a cornerstone investment from global engineering group SMS as part of a wider $4-million institutional share placement to provide working capital for the Mount Peake vanadium/titanium/iron project in the Northern Territory.
The placement would comprise about 36.36-million shares at a price of 11c a share. SMS had agreed to subscribe for 14-million of the shares, or $1.5-million, giving the group a 2% stake in TNG.
TNG had also received a firm commitment from an overseas institution to subscribe for about 22.36-million shares, amounting to $2.5-million.
TNG MD Paul Burton said on Monday that the investment by SMS was a vote of confidence in the future of TNG, the Mount Peake project and the company’s financing and development strategy.
TNG and SMS were already working together on several aspects of the project, including a joint effort to commercialise the technology underpinning the Tivan downstream refinery and a heads of agreement for the engineering, design and construction of the refinery in Darwin.
The capital raising would boost TNG’s cash reserves to about $7.5-million. The proceeds of the raising would enable the company to advance its project funding arrangements ahead of the start of construction.
A definitive feasibility study, which was completed in 2015, forecast that Mount Peake would produce 17 560 t/y of high-purity vanadium pentoxide, 236 000 t/y of titanium dioxide and 637 000 t/y of pig iron.
In March, TNG signed a binding term sheet with global commodities trader Gunvor for the life-of-mine offtake of iron from the operation.