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PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Dual-listed gold miner Troy Resources on Wednesday announced that it had secured a A$100-million revolving corporate facility to progress its Karouni project, in Guyana.
The facility with Investec Bank would have a three-year term with semi-annual repayments, starting in June of next year.
Of the A$100-million, A$70-million had been credit approved subject to the finalisation of documentation. The balance would become available once Troy progressed with the development of the Karouni project, and subject to Investec credit approval.
“We are very pleased to have agreed this facility with Investec who have been great supporters of Troy over the years. Of the newly approved A$70-million facility, A$40-million will replace the existing drawn facility, so essentially A$30-million is new debt capacity,” said Troy MD Paul Benson.
“Importantly, we expect to be able to fund construction of Karouni with this new capacity, existing cash reserves and operating cash flow. The remaining A$30-million of the facility, we see as back-up at this stage and it gives us flexibility to consider other opportunities.”
As part consideration for provision of the facility, ASX- and TSX-listed Troy had agreed to the granting of more than 3.3-million call options over the company’s ordinary shares to Investec to the value of A$5-million with an exercise price of A$1.50 each and a three-year term.
The issue of options would be subject to receipt of the approval from the ASX and the TSX. Part of the issue will also be subject to shareholder approval.
The Karouni project, which was previously know as the West Omai operation, would cost about $86.8-million to develop.
A preliminary scoping study estimated that the two opencut and one underground mine feeding a conventional carbon-in-leach plant with 750 000 t/y of capacity, would deliver 633 000 oz of gold over a seven-year mine life.
Average yearly gold production would reach about 90 000 oz, with the first 12 months delivering 102 000 oz.
Benson said on Wednesday that apart from enabling Troy to progress the Karouni operation, the facility also enabled the company to restart brownfield exploration at both Karouni and the Caspaso gold project, in order to add to the resource inventory.