JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Spitfire Materials has successfully raised $5.33-million, through an oversubscribed share placement at 10c, to fast-track its Australian gold exploration and development strategy.
The capital raise comes on the back of a recently completed merger with ASX-listed Aphrodite Gold.
The capital will be used to rapidly advance Spitfire’s portfolio of Australian gold projects, the first of which is a major resource in-fill and extensional diamond drilling programme to a depth of 5 km, which is scheduled to start towards the end of January at the Aphrodite gold project, near Kalgoorlie, in Western Australia.
In addition, the capital also enables the junior to start key pre-development studies at the Aphrodite project, including metallurgical and ore sorting testwork.
Follow-up drilling at the Mulwarrie project will also be earmarked for additional capital expenditure, where drilling in 2017 intersected significant primary high-grade gold mineralisation.
Further, the capital will enable Spitfire to pay some of the outstanding costs of the recently completed merger with Aphrodite Gold, including stamp duty on the transaction.
In addition to also providing general working capital, the money has also been earmarked for use in evaluating other complementary growth and consolidation opportunities in the Western Australian gold sector.
MD John Young believes the “outstanding” support from investors is testament to Spitfire’s quality of gold assets and the “significant opportunity” to rapidly grow its resource inventory and build a substantial new gold company.
“We intend to bring a combination of creative new thinking, new technology and a real focus to the re-evaluation of the Aphrodite project, which is the centerpiece of our strategy to quickly establish the critical mass to become a significant new player in the Australian gold sector,” he noted.