American gold mining giant Newmont (ASX:NEM) is participating in Antipa Minerals’ (ASX:AZY) $5.75 million placement to maintain its 8.6% stake in the junior gold explorer.
To exercise its top-up right, Newmont will contribute a further $540,000, boosting placement funds to $6.25 million.
Small cap investor Lion Selection Group (ASX:LSX) also participated in the placement, dropping in $2 million for a roughly 4% stake in Antipa.
Antipa will issue Newmont around 54.15 million shares at $0.01 each.
The company also previously struck a drill-for-equity agreement with Topdrill, which Antipa says takes total new funding secured to $7.25 million.
Antipa had around $5.4 million cash in the bank at the end of the March quarter.
Managing Director Roger Mason says Newmont’s participation represents a strong endorsement of Antipa’s Paterson Province portfolio in Western Australia and exploration strategy.
Newmont is Antipa’s farm-in partner on the Wilki Project, which is within 3km of Newmont’s Telfer gold-copper-silver mine and 22 million-tonne-per-annum processing plant. The project is also 9km from Newmont-Greatland Gold’s Havieron gold-copper development project.
The company, which has a market capitalisation of $51.8 million, will use the cash raised to continue advancing its flagship Minyari Dome Gold Project, where phase-two drilling will soon start.
The campaign will include reverse circulation and diamond core drilling largely at the GEO-01 prospect, with the aim of expanding the current resource inventory of 1.8 million ounces of gold, 64,300 tonnes of copper, 584,000 ounces of silver and 11,100 tonnes of cobalt.
Once the resource has been updated, Antipa will complete an updated Scoping Study which will include any potential additional production opportunity that GEO-01 may provide.
Antipa says it will also take into account the significant increase in the Australian dollar gold price since the Scoping Study was first released in August 2022.
The previous Scoping Study used an assumed gold price of US$1,750 an ounce, which at the time translated to an Australian dollar gold price of $2,431 based on a 0.72 AUD:USD exchange rate.
The Australian dollar gold price is now sitting around $3,518 an ounce, an almost 45% increase since the original study was completed.
The updated Scoping Study is slated for completion in August 2024.
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: Antipa Minerals
