Photo by: Bloomberg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The shareholders of Canada’s B2Gold Corporation have agreed to a A$670-million merger agreement with ASX-listed Papillon Resources.
Papillon’s own shareholders have also come out in favour of the merger, with 99.5% of the voting shareholders throwing their support behind the merger. Furthermore, the Foreign Investment Review Board and the TSX also approved the merger.
The two firms have agreed to exchange 0.661 of a B2Gold common share for each Papillon ordinary share held. The deal would give B2Gold access to Papillon’s Fekola gold deposit in Mali, lifting the company’s compliant measured and indicated resources by 25%.
Papillon MD and CEO Mark Connelly has previously said that the merger with B2Gold would not affect the construction schedule for Fekola.
The project’s prefeasibility study had estimated that over an initial nine-year life-of-mine, Fekola would produce about 306 000 oz/y of gold, at an average operating cost of $580/oz. The capital cost at the project has been estimated at $292-million.
Papillon was currently completing a definitive feasibility study for Fekola, scheduled for completion in the second half of 2014, targeting a four-million-tonne-a-year base case operation.