PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed TNG has received conditional support for up to A$200-milion in debt funding from the Export Credit Agency Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-SURE) for the development of its Mt Peake vanadium/titanium/iron project, in the Northern Territory.

The conditional letter of support received from K-SURE follows on from the recent receipt of letters of support and interest from German and Australian export credit agencies totalling A$600-million, taking the total in conditional interest from Australian, German and Korean government-backed funding sources for the Mt Peake project to up to A$800-million

In addition to this up to A$800-million of government-related funding interest, TNG has received expressions of interest from seven Australian and International commercial and investment banks for financing the commercial component of the debt for the project.

TNG said on Monday that with the combination of the significant government-related funding and the substantial interest received from the commercial debt market, the company is confident that its project financing strategy for Mt Peake is firmly on track.

“We welcome the receipt of this commitment for up to A$200-million in debt funding for Mt Peake from K-SURE, which further cements our strong, long-standing relationship with South Korea, particularly considering that Korea’s WOOJIN was one of our foundational offtake customers for vanadium production from Mt Peake,” said TNG MD and CEO Paul Burton.

“This caps a solid couple of months for TNG, with results of dedicated hard work seeing us receive a total of up to A$800-million in conditional letters of support and interest for the Mt Peake project from Australian-, German- and Korean-backed funding sources. This is in addition to the existing debt funding commitment of up to US$600-million from the German government-backed KfW IPEX-Bank GmbH.

“This shows that our multi-pronged global funding strategy is firmly on track and represents a strong vindication both of TNG and the quality of the Mt Peake project as a world-class critical minerals asset and of our funding strategy, which has been meticulously developed, planned and executed over a long period of time,” said Burton.

“This reinforces the importance of having a stable corporate environment to ensure we can finalise these funding agreements and progress the Mt Peake project to a final investment decision. We have received strong indications of support from all of our funding and strategic partners, and we are looking forward to moving the project forward as quickly as possible. We are continuing to focus on achieving project milestones as our key priority, and we are pleased that the hard work of our team over many months and years has resulted in some momentum building in recent weeks. This is notwithstanding the disruption that has been caused by the unnecessary section 249D action that has been taken by a group of minority shareholders and risks derailing this progress.”

Mt Peake is expected to require a capital investment of A$824-million, according to a 2019 study, and could produce 23.3-million tonnes of magnetite concentrate,