Photo by: Bloomberg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Copper developer CuDeco on Wednesday announced that its Rocklands project, in Queensland, was funded to production, after the company closed a A$63-million nonrenounceable rights issue.
The one-for-four rights issue was priced at 80c a share, and was launched in April this year.
“Shareholders' strong support for the rights issue is evidenced by the applications received, totalling around 42-million shares from eligible shareholders, with the remainder to be allocated to the sub-underwriters,” CuDeco MD Peter Hutchison said on Wednesday.
“With significant support from our major shareholders and careful management of expenditure, we have been able to steer the company through a challenging ten months or so. With funding now available, I see no impediment to completing the final stages of commissioning, through to first product deliveries.”
Initial commissioning activities at Rocklands focused on copper production only, including through the gravity and flotation circuits.
Once the copper circuits reached steady state, it was planned that the pyrite/cobalt and dense media separation magnetite circuits would be commissioned, and these streams would be brought on line.
The average life-of-mine production from the Rocklands project was expected to reach 18 347 t/y over an initial ten-year mine life.
Trial mining at the Rocklands project started in 2012, and at the end of June last year, a total of 13.8-million tonnes of ore and waste had been excavated, with an estimated 2.2-million tonnes of ore stockpiled and ready for processing.