Cornish Metals looks to £40m backing for South Crofty

Cornish Metals Inc hopes to raise up to £40.5 million from the former chief executive of Xstrata and a placing to advance its South Crofty tin project in Cornwall.

FUNDING  

The Canadian company has signed a conditional agreement for £25m with Guernsey-based Vision Blue Resources (VBR), founded by South African mining executive and the UK Conservative Party’s former treasurer and chief executive, Sir Mick Davis.

The funds are in exchange for 138,888,889 units or 27.2% of the company’s issued and outstanding common shares.

Cornish Metals is also conducting a private placement in the UK of up to 76,872,728 units with certain existing and new institutional investors, a concurrent private placing to existing and new UK institutional investors, as well as a subscription by existing Canadian investors and eligible accredited private investors. 

The private placing and subscription are expected to raise a further £15m.

Subscribers include Cornish Metals chairman Patrick Anderson; founder and chairman emeritus Grenville Thomas; independent director Stephen Gatley; independent director John McGloin, president, CEO and director Richard Williams; and chief operating officer Owen Mihalop.

USES 

The 30-month programme will include dewatering of the mine £16.1m), underground resource drilling (£8.5m), surface drilling (£4.4m), feasibility study (£1.2m), South Crofty holding costs (£1.7m) and corporate and general working capital (£8.5m) before a potential construction decision.

VBR

Chartered accountant Sir Mick Davis founded VBR in December 2020 “to accelerate the responsible supply of commodities necessary to facilitate the transition to clean, green energy.”

Before his role as CEO of Xstrata, Sir Mick was chief financial officer and an executive director of Billiton plc.

VBR’s portfolio includes NextSource Materials focused on graphite in Madagascar, Ferro-Alloy Resources group (vanadium in Kazakhstan) and Sinova Global (quartz and silicon in Canada and the USA).