Argent Minerals (ASX: ARD) is currently undertaking a placement to sophisticated investors to raise up to A$1 million to progress the development of its Kempfield Silver Project in New South Wales.
The company is offering up to 16.7 million shares at $0.06 each with a one for one attaching option exercisable at $0.175 on or before 31 March 2016.
Argent plants to use the funds to progress the NSW Government approval process for the Kempfield Project, for which the company submitted an Environmental Impact Statement in early April.
Funding was also be used to accelerate the follow up exploration program covering the volcanic hosted massive sulphide (VMS) geophysical anomalies identified immediately adjacent to the Kempfield deposit and within the proposed project area.
Kempfield has been classified as a “State Significant Development” by the NSW Government.
It hosts 52 million silver equivalent ounces and is a near-term production project.
Argent plans to bring the project into development via a staged approach, with stage one comprising the mining of 8.8 million tonnes for 9.9 million ounces of silver and 15,000 ounces of gold over five years.
A stage one heap leach extraction of silver-gold to doré will provide for substantially lower capital and operating expenditure, a higher net present value and internal rate of return, earlier debt retirement and cash to fund company growth.
Beyond stage one, Argent is focused on developing the project further into a major long term silver-lead-zinc mining operation.
The capital expenditure for stage two is timed to align with revenue from stage one operations and stage two has the potential to extend the life of mine to seven plus years.
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