Mining

Caravel Minerals raises funds to deliver pre-feasibility study on copper project

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By Danica Cullinane - 
Caravel Minerals placement ASX CVV raises funds pre-feasibility study PFS copper project

Caravel Minerals has completed a $9 million share placement with funds planned to progress its namesake copper project in WA.

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Caravel Minerals (ASX: CVV) has announced it has received firm commitments to raise $9 million to deliver a pre-feasibility study (PFS) at its flagship namesake copper project in Western Australia.

Earlier this month, the copper explorer advised the market the Caravel project PFS was underway and due for completion at the end of 2021.

The company said part of the raised funds will also be used to explore its other projects, which include gold and base metal exploration tenements in WA’s South West Yilgarn Terrane, as well as for general working capital.

The placement was offered to institutional, sophisticated and professional investors at $0.16 per share, with 56.25 million new fully-paid ordinary shares to be issued. The issue price represents a 6.7% discount to the five-day volume weighted average price (VWAP) of $0.171 and a 7.5% discount to the 15-day VWAP of $0.173.

Canaccord Genuity (Australia) acted as the sole lead manager and bookrunner to the placement, which received strong support from both new and existing shareholders.

Caravel copper project

At Caravel, the company is proposing to develop a large-scale, long-life copper mining and processing operation about 150km northeast of Perth in WA’s Wheatbelt.

The project is underpinned by current indicated and inferred mineral resources of 662 million tonnes at 0.28% copper for 1.86Mt of contained copper.

According to Caravel, the project is amenable to low-cost open pit bulk mining due to a low strip ratio and wide ore zones and has access to infrastructure including grid power, sealed roads, well serviced towns and nearby ports.

With the newly raised funds, the company said it will be able to deliver its PFS on the project in a “compressed timeframe” by the end of the year.

This will include the completion of drilling and an updated JORC resource, which is expected in the third quarter of 2021.

Last week, Caravel said 21 reverse circulation holes had been completed with 4,000m of samples generated to date.

Other aspects of the PFS will comprise: a geotechnical assessment; revised pit optimisation and mine design; a detailed metallurgical and comminution testing program; engineering design for the process plant and infrastructure; tailings and waste storage design studies; hydrology, environmental and social studies; preliminary mine permitting applications, as well as financial analysis including capital and operating costs.

Caravel also noted a number of studies completed in a 2019 scoping study already meet the criteria to satisfy PFS and definitive feasibility study due diligence.