PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Rare earths developer Arafura Resources has completed the second tranche of a A$40-million share placement announced earlier this year, to fund work at the Nolans neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) project, in the Northern Territory.
Arafura in June this year announced the placement of more than 333.3-million shares, at a price of 12c each, to raise a total of A$40-million.
The first tranche of more than 175.6-million shares was placed under the company’s existing placement capacity, while the second tranche, which consisted of more than 157.7-million shares, had been subject to shareholder approval at a meeting on August 9.
Meanwhile, the accompanying share purchase plan, which has also been priced at 12c a share and targets raising A$5-million, will also close on Friday.
Funds raised will be used to commence front-end engineering design activities at the Nolans project and for general working capital purposes.
An updated feasibility study estimated that over a mine life of 38 years, the project would produce 4 440 t/y of NdPr oxide and 474 t/y of heavy rare earth oxide, as well as 144 393 t/y of phosphoric acid.
The project is expected to require a capital investment of A$1.05-billion, and will generate annual sales revenue of A$534-million from rare earth sales, and A$79-million a year from phosphoric acid sales.