Wolf Minerals announced on 21 December that it had completed a A$20.3 million share placement as part of the funding package required to bring the Hemerdon tungsten and tin project in Devon, south west England into production. This followed the arrangement of a US$75 million bridging loan with US private equity firm Resource Capital Fund (RCF) earlier last month. The capital raising brought a new strategic investor, TTI (NZ) Limited, onto Wolf’s share register, with a 19.9% stake in the company. TTI is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Todd Corporation Limited, a private New Zealand-based company with a diversified portfolio of business interests. Existing major shareholders RCF and Traxys Projects also participated in the placement.
Funds provided by the placement will be used to provide working capital to commence the Hemerdon project, repay an existing $6 million RCF loan facility and purchase 15 houses around the Hemerdon site. Wolf has already negotiated options to purchase with many of the property owners, allowing this process to move forward quickly.
Initial site work commenced in early 2012, with the construction of a link road, which was completed in August 2012. The detailed design and procurement of the plant and infrastructure will be the first stage of the process and is expected to take approximately six months. Access to the site and the commencement of site works for the processing plant and infrastructure is expected to commence on completion of this work. The firm plans to start mining by late 2014, creating 230 directly employed jobs as well as more within the supply chain. It is planned that the operation will treat 3Mtpy of ore to produce 3,500tpy of wolframite tungsten concentrates with a grade of 65% WO3 and 450tpy of 40% tin concentrates.
