The deal is with its current 9.7% shareholder China Non-Ferrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering and Construction Company, but structured to ensure they don’t obtain a controlling interest beyond 19.9%.

The placement of 10 million shares at 62c a share is at a 30% premium to Terramin’s recent 15-day volume weighted average share price of 54.18c, while under the $50 million subscription agreement, Terramin has the right, but not the obligation, to issue shares to NFC at the same premium.

With around $10 million currently in the bank, Terramin executive chairman Dr Kevin Moriarty said it provided the group with the financial and technical support to grow at an even faster pace.

To this end, the company is hoping to announce new acquisitions in the copper-gold space in Australia within the next month, while also eyeing opportunities in lead and zinc.

Dr Moriarty told MiningNews.net it was already in discussions with a number of parties with projects that provided “synergies with its Adelaide head office”

The funding will also enable Terramin to fast-track deep drilling under its Angas mine in south SA to try and push out the mine life beyond the current 2015, as well as progress a scoping study on its Menninnie Dam property.

“We are hoping to complete the Menninnie Dam scoping study in two months and grow the mine life at Angas by up to two years within the next few months,” Dr Moriarty said.

“We would also like to increase the resource at Menninnie Dam and plan to start a $5 million drilling program early in the New Year and have also been in discussions with several parties in the area about potential farm-ins.”

Menninnie Dam has a current inferred resource of 3.8Mt at 3.2% lead, 4% zinc and 34gpt silver at a 3.5% lead-zinc cut-off grade.



Outside of Australia, it is hoping to make a decision to mine and finalise permitting next year for its Tala Hamza zinc-lead project in Algeria.

“We have been staffing up recently and taken on very experienced mining engineers in block caving and appointed a new country manager,” he said.

“For the scale of project, Tala Hamza is quite competitive on a tonne-per-tonne [cost-per-tonne] basis to our Angas mine, given that it is 10 times its size.”

Angas, at a throughput rate of 400,000 tonnes per annum, cost just under $A70 million to develop, while Tala Hamza, with a planned capacity of 4Mtpa, has a price tag of around $US579 million and is set to produce 370,000t of zinc and lead concentrates, containing 164,000t of zinc grading up to 53% and 36,000t of lead over a 12-year life.

Operating costs are expected to be low at around $2.97/t, growing to $9.62/t with processing, while cash costs are forecast to be around 32c per pound of payable zinc.

While the company’s forecasts for next year are due to be released next month, Dr Moriarty told MNN production rates would be similar, if not a little higher, than this year.

For the six months to the end of June this year, Angas produced 23,341t of zinc concentrate and 9009t of lead concentrate from the processing of 193,997t of material.

Payable metal for the period was 10,197t of zinc, 4612t of lead, 72t of copper, 128,998 ounces of silver and 1705oz of gold.

Concentrate sales for the half-year totaled 19,863t of zinc and 8694t of lead, while cash costs net of by-product credits were US61c/lb of payable zinc.

Shares in Terramin were up 9.09% in morning trade to 54c.