FairStar gains lease for Steeple Hill

FairStar Resources has passed another key milestone for the development of its Steeple Hill tenements, after the state government granted a mining lease today.

Earlier this week, FairStar announced it had signed a native title agreement covering the Steeple Hill project, one of three conditions necessary for the company to secure a $300 million finance facility for the project’s development.

The mining lease announcement today means the only condition remaining for FairStar to secure the debt facility is an off-take agreement for a “substantial part” of the ore to be produced at Steeple Hill, located in the Yilgarn region.

Managing director Kevin Robertson said the company was making sustained and steady progress towards securing an off-take agreement.

“Shareholders can be encouraged that the board and company have achieved what we said we would when we made the conditional funding announcement just three weeks ago,” Mr Robertson said in a statement.

“Steeple Hill is a company transforming project that will rapidly take FairStar from an explorer to a producer of iron ore in a short time frame and we are looking to the investors to complete their due diligence and upgrade the funding status for our $300 million facility from conditional to unconditional.”

Mr Robertson said the funds would be applied to construction of a processing plant for Steeple Hill, and the facility would be repayable over ten years.

At close of trade today, FairStar’s stock was up 19 per cent, to 4.4 cents.