Mitre Mining secures $10.5m in capital raising to drive rapid growth in Chile

Mitre Mining (ASX: MMC) is planning to accelerate its resource growth strategy in Chile following a highly successful $10.5 million capital raising.

The Australian junior received firm commitments from sophisticated, professional and other investors to raise an initial $10m with strong domestic and overseas institutional support from both new investors and existing shareholders.

Due to the strong interest, a small second tranche of $509,500 worth of shares will – subject to shareholder approval – be issued predominantly to Mitre directors, company consultants and management.

Accelerated drilling

Chief executive officer Tim Laneyrie said the proceeds would be used to accelerate drilling and rapid resource growth at Mitre’s Cerro Bayo silver-gold project.

“The overwhelming demand for this placement reflects support for our clear pathway to substantial and rapid resource growth,” he said.

“We already have extensive known mineralisation sitting outside the resource.”

“We aim to bring this into the mineral resource with the infill drilling programs, one of which has already started.”

“We look forward to generating strong news flow from this drilling in the lead-up to a further proposed resource update.”

Follow-up work

Mitre wrapped up the acquisition of the high-grade Cerro Bayo project earlier this year and has since doubled its resource and commenced its maiden drilling program there.

The company plans to move quickly to follow up widespread high-grade mineralisation it has identified outside the known resource, including the promising Cristal veins.

Drilling is set to commence at the Cristal veins to test the newly-discovered vein swarm and in-fill several high-grade historic drill intercepts not in the current resource, following completion of a Pegaso 7 drilling program.

The company is also integrating over 30 years of geological data and actively working on future drilling targets that have not seen modern exploration methods.

Early success

Mitre’s recently-released Cerro Bayo resource update included extensive historic drilling, recent drill hole re-logging/re-sampling information, face assay data, detailed drive mapping, historic NI43-101 compliant wireframes and relevant geological records.

The update included the addition of the high-grade Delia South, Trinidad and Coyita underground resources, which total 1.2 million tonnes at 655 grams per tonne silver equivalent (7.9g/t gold equivalent) for 25.4 million ounces silver equivalent.

The update established a revised total inferred and indicated resource within the Laguna Verde area of approximately 5Mt at 311g/t for 50Moz silver equivalent.

Mitre will use some of its new funds to further progress resource growth proximal to the Laguna Verde processing facility as it continues to review historic data and undertake additional drilling.

It also plans to conduct reviews and drilling at the Condor, Temer, Dagny, Yasna, Dalila, Branca, Fabiola and Juncos underground mines.