JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim-listed Stellar Diamonds on Thursday announced that it had raised about £396 180 through the issue of 25.56-million ordinary shares, enabling it to buy a number of earthmoving machines for its Tongo and Baoulé projects in Sierra Leone and Guinea respectively.
The machines had a total aggregate value of €500 000 and would be bought from major Stellar shareholder Foradex Invest, which was subscribing for all 25.56-million subscription shares, increasing its shareholding in Stellar to 25.9%.
“Stellar has conducted extensive due diligence of the second-hand market for similar earthmoving machines and has confirmed that the units and prices offered by Foradex are fair and market related,” the company said.
Stellar said the Baoulé project would receive most of the equipment in an effort to boost the mining and production rate as part of the large-scale bulk sampling, or trial mining, over the next 12 months.
The first diamonds had recently been recovered at this project, with the company now looking to increase mining and processing capacity.
Meanwhile, Stellar noted that, as a result of its participation in the subscription, Foradex had also been issued one half of a warrant for every subscription share, enabling it to subscribe for a further 12.78-million new ordinary shares in Stellar.
Should Foradex exercise these warrants, which would expire on April 30, 2015, its interest in Stellar would increase to 27.18%.