Duke raising $35m-plus in True North merger move
By Industry Queensland
Duke Exploration has lodged a prospectus for a share offer to raise more than $35 million on its path to transform through a merger with True North Copper.
True North holds a package of North-West Queensland assets including its Cloncurry project – which takes in the Great Australia tenements and processing facility – and agreements to acquire a complementary tenement package via CopperCorp and the Mount Oxide project from Perilya.
“The directors of the company are of the view that the proposed acquisitions will create a significant opportunity for both Duke shareholders and True North shareholders through the creation of a significantly larger company with a portfolio of copper, gold, and cobalt assets in Queensland, some of which have the potential to be accelerated into near-term production due to granted mining leases and processing facilities currently on care and maintenance,” chair Ian McAleese states in his letter to shareholders.
“This prospectus is seeking to raise a minimum of $35,000,000 via the issue of shares at an issue price of $0.25 per share under the offer and up to an additional $5,000,000 under a priority offer to eligible duke shareholders.”
Related: New player to drive North-West Qld copper projects
The share offer is fully underwritten by Bell Potter Securities and Morgans Corporate.
Duke’s existing projects include the Bundarra copper project in Central Queensland, the Prairie Creek gold project, and the Emmerson JV project in New South Wales.
Duke expects to complete the True North, CopperCorp and Mount Oxide acquisitions in the first week of June and will be be renamed True North Copper.
The True North Copper asset package contains a JORC copper resource of 26.94Mt at 1.12 per cent copper, a JORC cobalt resource containing a combined 9.15Mt at 0.23 per cent cobalt, the Cloncurry Great Australia mine processing facilities, and more than 552sq km of prospective exploration tenements.
Duke sees opportunity to fast-track several assets into production, subject to further technical studies and financing.
