The A$15 million raising at 30c, a 15% discount, comes with one free 45c option per two shares exercisable by August 2022. It was managed by Ocean Equities and Canaccord Genuity.

 

The company wants to develop a globally significant project at Broken Hill in New South Wales, and needs to complete a planned demonstration plant to provide battery grade cobalt sulphate to end-users and potential strategic partners.

 

CEO Joe Kaderavek said the placement was supported by a number of "highly regarded domestic and international institutional investors".

 

Cobalt Blue expects to complete its pilot plant sample program over the next weeks, and will then swing into developing the demonstration plant to process a 3000 tonne bulk sample, supporting its feasibility studies.

 

The Broken Hill cobalt project is based around a proprietary processing technology that Cobalt Blue says can produce a product "that materially exceeds a marketable quality cobalt product".

 

The pilot plant has been running at steady state for some time, producing a mixed hydroxide product that is targeting global battery producers, and the demonstration plant is a critical step in the year-long process to qualify as a cobalt sulphate supplier.

 

The product contains around 37% cobalt and has good nickel credits, at 7%.

 

The studies suggest around 85-90% of the in-ground cobalt resources of 81,400t cobalt can be produced as a paid cobalt product, making the project a top-tier producer, assuming the $560 million development goes ahead.

 

Reserves are 72Mt at 710 parts per million.

 

At full scale, the Broken Hill plant is projected to run for 20 years producing 3500tpa of cobalt and 300,000tpa of elemental sulphur. Payback is estimated at 4.5 years.

 

Cobalt Blue started the quarter with $4.2 million cash.

 

Shares in the company have traded between 8.3-51.5c over the past year and were down 5.5% today to 34c, valuing the company at $89 million.