Ewen Hosie | Australian Mining | May 2, 2018
Gold explorer Geopacific Resources has raised $10 million in exploration funding for its Woodlark gold project in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea.
The funds were raised in a placement of 280 million shares at $0.036 cents each, a 5.3 per cent discount on the company’s closing price before making the announcement.
Geopacific hopes to establish a drill program to define the project’s wider potential beyond near-pit reserve drilling. The company is targeting an aspirational resource of 5 million ounces (Moz) of gold, a significant expansion on the current resource figure of 1.57Moz.
“Any new discoveries have the potential to ultimately improve the forecast gold production profile in excess of the current 100,000oz per annum and extend the mine life,” said Geopacific managing director Ron Heeks.
“Having established Woodlark as a robust gold development project it’s encouraging to see strong financial support for our strategy to finalise the definitive feasibility study (DFS) and bring a significant exploration program online to continue to grow the project,” he added.
More than half of the $10 million will go towards resource development and drilling at $5.6 million overall; $900,000 is budgeted for completion of Woodlark’s DFS, $1.1 million for exploration costs at company projects in Cambodia and Fiji, and the remaining $2.4 million will be for working capital, offer and other project costs.
In addition to Woodlark, Geopacific’s projects include the Kou Sa copper-gold project in Cambodia and five gold projects in various stages of exploration in Fiji, being the island nation’s largest licence holder. These include the Nabila, Sabeto, Vuda, Rakiraki and Cakaudrove projects.
In March, completion of a pre-feasibility study (PFS) on Woodlark allowed Geopacific to increase its interest in the project to 93 per cent under agreement terms with joint venture partner Kula Gold.
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