True North Copper is topping up its war chest with a $15 million placement as it drives towards a planned restart of the Great Australia mine at Cloncurry.

The placement represents a substantial de-risking of the mine restart, according to TNC managing director Marty Costello.

“We expect completion of the mining study for the Great Australia mine and FID by early December 2023,” he said.

“We are laser focused on delivering on our stated objectives and creating value for our shareholders.”

TNC has received firm commitments for a two-tranche placement to raise about $10.7 million in cash and approximately $4.3 million in debt converted.

It has also signed a term sheet with a specialist mine finance group to provide a facility of up to $US28 million ($43 million) to support the growth of the business.

Related: True North steams towards Great Australia mine start

True North Copper started trading on the Australian Securities Exchange in June following its merger with Duke Exploration and a $37.7 million capital raising.

The company’s principal assets include the Mount Oxide copper-cobalt project and the Cloncurry copper-gold hub, where it is producing copper sulphate from a refurbished solvent extraction and crystallisation plant at the Great Australia complex.

TNC has continued to ramp up that production in the December quarter and reported today that it was now cashflow positive.

In addition to its work to restart mining at Great Australia, TNC will be turning some of the new funding towards exploration across its tenements.

The company this week reported ‘phenomenal’ strikes of 26.20m at 4.45 per cent copper and 46.60m at 2.18 per cent copper at its Vero resource within the Mount Oxide project, 140km north of Mount Isa..