To fund the commencement of diamond drilling at the Obi Gold Project in Indonesia, and to meet option payments in relation to the project, Ashburton Minerals (ASX: ATN) has placed 75 million shares at $0.02 to raise A$1.5 million before costs.
Macquarie Bank (ASX: MBL) is the largest participant which is taking up 25 million shares, with other participants including Munich based Schroeder Equities GmbH and institutional and private clients of Foster Stockbroking and BGF Equities.
Earlier in the month Ashburton announced that it has entered into an option agreement to acquire a majority interest in the Obi Gold Project, which encompasses a large artisanal goldfield and surrounding ground covered by a 70 sq km exploration licence on the island of Obi, in the province of South Halmahera in eastern Indonesia.
The licence area contains a series of epithermal gold-silver-base metal veins and breccia zones currently being worked over a 1 km area by some 1,000 miners.
The artisanal goldfield contains over 200 pits, shafts and adits scattered on the northern slopes of a hillside, located 2 km inland from the coastal village of Anggai.
Ore is treated through some 140 processing huts, equipped with banks of rudimentary small ball mills, or rolling drums.
Random sampling of run-of-mine ore by Ashburton geologists, comprising 15 samples which were brought back to Perth for analysis, showed average grade to be 16 g/t gold, ranging from 4.3 g/t to 42.3 g/t
The placement is being made within the company’s 15% capacity.