Photo by: Bloombeg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Bauxite developer Metro Mining has extended the takeover period of its offer for unlisted Gulf Alumina from February 15 to March 15.
Metro in December last year launched a takeover offer for Gulf Alumina, offering Gulf shareholders 3.3 new Metro shares for every one gulf share held.
Acceptance of the transaction would result in Gulf shareholders owning a combined 44% of the enlarged company.
The offer was subject to a number of conditions, including a 50.1% minimum acceptance condition.
At the time of the offer, Metro told shareholders that a combination of the company’s own assets and Gulf’s adjacent bauxite development project at Skardon River could create a leading independent Cape York bauxite company.
Gulf holds about 2 000 km2 of partially drilled bauxite mining tenements and rights in the Cape York peninsula, in northern Queensland, and a further 320 km in the Northern Territory. The takeover target was aiming to develop a three-million-tonne-a-year operation at its Skardon River tenements, ramping up to five-million tonnes a year of direct shipping ore.
Metro recently completed a prefeasibility study into an expanded production scenario at its own proposed Bauxite Hills mine, which considered doubling bauxite production to four-million tonnes a year, over a mine life of 13 years.