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Emmerson Resources (ERM) today begins drilling for copper and gold at its Hermitage project near Tennant Creek, in line with announcing a $6.5 million capital raise.
A 10-hole, 2000-metre reverse circulation and diamond drilling program has begun at the project, which is about 40 kilometres north of Tennant Creek and where the company has already reported some very high-grade results.
Emmerson has already secured commitments for $5 million through a placement and a share purchase plan will open later this month, offering another $1.5 million in shares.
The issue price is 11.5 cents, an 11.4 per cent discount to the 30-day volume-weighted average price to April 11.
Managing Director Rob Bills said the drilling starts again where the company had to pull out earlier in the year due to drilling issues.
“We are excited to continue drilling at Hermitage where we returned our strongest-ever copper drill result,” he said.
“We are also preparing to drill Kiola, our most advanced project in NSW, which shares many characteristics of the Cadia-Ridgeway and Boda projects.
“We welcome some new institutional investors to the register and thank existing shareholders for their continued support.
“The strongly-supported placement reflects investor appetite for Emmerson’s high-quality portfolio of copper, gold and cobalt opportunities and removes any future uncertainty around funding for our planned work.
“We believe Emmerson is well positioned in having significant ground positions across some of Australia’s foremost exploration hotspots with Tennant Creek being one of Australia’s highest-grade Gold provinces, and, the Macquarie Arc in NSW, home of some of the largest copper-gold projects.”
The company has a market cap of about $70 million and shares were trading down more than seven per cent after the capital raising announcement, sitting at 13 cents at 2:45 pm AEST.
In other capital raising news, Black Cat Syndicate (BC8) is in a trading halt after news it’s in line to acquire the Coyote and Paulsens gold operations from Northern Star Resources in a deal worth up to $44.5 million. One of the conditions is that Black Cat can raise $25 million by mid-June.
Shares last traded at 68 cents and it has a market cap above $95 milion.
Sabre Resources (SBR) has raised $4.9 million through a placement to progress its nickel sulphide projects in the Pilbara.
The money has been raised at just 0.65 cents, with attaching options at 0.6 cents.
Sabre CEO Jon Dugdale said drilling would soon start at the Sherlock Bay nickel project.
“The funding will also allow us to aggressively explore our other nickel sulphide and gold projects in WA as well as our uranium and copper-gold projects in the Northern Territory,” he said.
Sabre has a market cap just over $14 million and was trading up about seven per cent on the news.
AuKing Mining (AKN) has announced it’s raising funds just a week after it revealed a 30 per cent increase in the copper, gold, zinc, lead and silver resources at Koongie Park in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Auking holds a 75 per cent stake in the project.
Also raising cash is Grand Gulf Energy (GGE), which is a helium player in the US.
Details of these raises are expected to be released to the market next week.
