PERTH (miningweekly.com) – German export credit agency Euler Hermes has issued ASX-listed TNG with a letter of interest to provide up to A$300-million in finance for the Mt Peake vanadium/titanium/iron project in the Northern Territory.

TNG on Tuesday said that the company had also received expressions of interest from seven Australian financial project lenders to finance the Mt Peake project.

The company said that the strong interest from these financiers follows the conditional and non-binding letter of support received from Export Finance Australia, Australia’s Export Credit Agency, for a debt facility of up to A$300-million earlier this month.

“This marks another significant and exciting milestone in our multi-source funding strategy for Mt Peake. The receipt of a letter of interest for A$300-million in funding from Euler Hermes represents a significant achievement for TNG and represents the culmination of many years of hard work at TNG,” said TNG MD and CEO Paul Burton.

“Together with the existing commercial debt funding strategy being led by KfW and the recently announced conditional letter of support received from Export Finance Australia for debt funding of up to A$300-million, this shows that our funding strategy for Mt Peake is gathering momentum in line with our strategic plans. Currently, this equates to A$600-million of government-related conditional funding interest which is a significant contribution to our funding needs. And we are still working on additional attractive potential funding sources to further diversify the funding mix.

“In addition to government-related parties, we have also received expressions of interest from seven Tier-1 Australian, Asian and European project finance banks, reflecting the quality of the Mt Peake project and the vital role it can play as a long-life critical minerals project in the accelerating global energy transformation.”

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, based on a two-million-tonne-a-year operation and over a mine life of 37 years.