West African gold developer Aurum Resources has raised a hefty $52.5 million to pour fuel on the fire at its flagship 3.22-million-ounce Boundiali gold project in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa.
The company says the placement was strongly supported by new and existing strategic investors who tipped in $32.3 million, with the remaining $20 million scooped up by global institutional players.
The raise is expected to swell Aurum's war chest to more than $95 million post-placement, just as development plans get an early green light. The new funds will support the hasty procurement of long-lead items for the proposed Boundiali processing plant alongside the construction of a site access road, land acquisition for the plant and tailings facility, and an ongoing aggressive exploration drilling campaign.
The offer was impressively carried out at 55 cents per share, basically no discount to the 55.5 cents traded share price and was conducted by Canaccord Genuity, Bell Potter Securities and Stifel Nicolaus, which acted as managers of the offer.
Aurum Resources managing director Caigen Wang said: “This placement allows us to begin early development works at Boundiali while we complete the DFS. It funds long lead procurement, the site access road, and land for the processing plant and tailings storage facility, so critical-path items can start now rather than after the study is finished.”
Aurum’s ownership of 16 diamond drill rigs remains one of the company’s core advantages to its competitors. The ability to drill harder, faster and cheaper than many of its rivals has brought to bear a monster resource base in just three years of drilling, across a massive exploration package in the white-hot Côte d’Ivoire address.
At its flagship Boundiali project, the rigs are currently engaged in a 120,000-metre diamond drilling program aimed at converting resources, expanding known deposits and de-risking the project ahead of an updated resource and definitive feasibility study (DFS), expected in the December quarter.
The company is also preparing to launch a further 30,000m diamond drilling campaign at its nearby 1.16-million-ounce Napié gold project during the same period, to add to what is already a substantial combined resource inventory of 4.38 million ounces of gold across both Boundiali and Napié.
To support the increased activity, Aurum is constructing a dedicated exploration camp near the Napié deposits, a move expected to improve operational efficiency and lower drilling costs.
Backed by fresh funding and armed with a fleet of company-owned rigs, Aurum is in a rare position to control its own destiny. With 150,000 metres of drilling either underway or imminent and more than 4.3 million ounces already defined, the company is rapidly moving beyond simply finding gold and towards demonstrating the scale, economics and development potential of what is shaping up as one of West Africa’s emerging gold projects.
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By Andrew Todd
