PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Coal developer Paringa Resources has secured a $56-million debt facility to refinance its existing debt facility and accelerate the expansion of the Poplar Grove mine, in Kentucky.
The debt financing from Tribeca Global Resources Credit will be subject to the completion of a due diligence, the completion of documents and the satisfaction of conditions precedent.
Paringa is expecting to draw on the loan facility by the end of April this year.
“We are very pleased to have mandated Tribeca to arrange a highly competitive and flexible term loan facility. The debt financing proposal from Tribeca is a great endorsement of the Poplar Grove coal mine and significant milestone for Paringa in accelerating production to 2.8-million tonnes a year,” said Paringa MD Egan Antill.
The Tribeca term loan will be used to refinance Paringa’s existing $21.7-million debt facility and to fund the expansion of production at Poplar Grove to 2.8-million tonnes a year, which was previously planned to be funded out of free cash flows.
The 2.8-million-tonne-a-year Poplar Grove thermal coal mine forms part of Paringa’s 40 000-acre Buck Creek complex, which also contains the 3.8-million-tonne-a-year Cypress mine, where construction is set to begin in 2019.