Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT) has raised the full $1.9 million under its rights issue of shares priced at $0.021, demonstrating investor support for its exploration programs near Broken Hill, Orange and Kalgoorlie.
Impact shares last traded higher at $0.024.
It follows the recent investment of up to $7.3 million from Andrew Forrest's Squadron Resources.
This gives the company up to $9.3 million in staged exploration funding to accelerate its exploration programs at its Broken Hill, Mulga Tank and Commonwealth projects.
Drilling is already underway at Broken Hill in New South Wales where it discovered a 25 to 30 metre thick near-surface zone of mineralisation that contains high grade PGM’s along with nickel and copper beneath the dormant Red Hill mine.
In addition Impact has been awarded government co-funding of $353,000 towards drill programs at its Broken Hill and Mulga Tank Projects.
Dr Mike Jones, managing director, commented:
“We are delighted with the response to the rights issue with all shares being subscribed for and with more than 340 shareholders taking up their entitlement.
“In addition, our major German shareholder also took up a significant portion of their rights. We are also pleased to welcome to the share register, a second German investor who subscribed for a large number of shortfall shares.
“The drilling program underway at Broken Hill is the start of what will be the most exciting period in our company’s history as we try to unlock the upside potential on all three of our flagship projects over the next 12 months.
“The fact that we also have an almost unprecedented amount of $353,000 from Government drilling co-fund initiatives to fund two of our planned programs is an independent testament to the projects’ potential.”
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Rights Issue and Squadron Investment
Of the 94,437,193 new ordinary shares offered under the 1 for 6 rights issue, a total of 45,686,370 shares were accepted by eligible shareholders and a further 10,288,153 shares were applied for by shareholders as shortfall shares.
The remaining 38,462,670 shares were placed to sophisticated investors.
Impact has also received the initial cash injection of $3 million ($1 million subject to shareholder approval) from Squadron.
Broken Hill Exploration
Impact has started a drilling program at Broken Hill with up to 1,500 metres to be carried out at the Red Hill prospect where it discovered a 25 to 30 metre thick near-surface layer of copper-nickel-PGM mineralisation (T1 target).
This is expected to take up to 4 weeks to test 7 targets with assays to follow.
Target T5, an IP anomaly that may be caused by disseminated sulphide and/or magnetite towards the base of or below the Red Hill intrusion, is the first target.
Modelling of magnetic data has indicated the Red Hill intrusion may be at least 400 metres thick in this area.
Follow-up drilling will also be carried out at T1 where previous drilling defined an Upper and Lower Zone of mineralisation with results including 5.1 metres at 11g/t 7PGM, 1.9% copper and 0.9% nickel and 4.2 metres at 11.8g/t 7PGM, 2.6% copper and 0.5% nickel.
* 7PGM = Platinum-palladium-gold + osmium, iridium, rhodium, ruthenium where assayed.
Mineralisation is open at depth, where it is in part coincident with an Induced Polarisation (IP) chargeability anomaly identified in a ground geophysical survey.
Mulga Tank nickel-gold project
At the Mulga Tank project located 200 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie, the company has started an airborne magnetic and radiometric survey covering the entire 425 square kilometre project area.
Data from this survey will be used together with follow up ground electrical and soil geochemistry surveys to refine drill targets identified at the Mulga Tank Dunite and Panhandle prospects.
Impact has already received an almost unprecedented amount of $275,000 for co-funding of drilling in two awards as part of the Western Australian Government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme.
At the Mulga Tank Dunite Prospect Impact discovered high tenor nickel and copper sulphides in its maiden drill program in 2013.
The style of mineralisation and the nature of the rocks are similar to those that host the significant nickel deposits at Perseverance (1 million tonnes of contained nickel) and Mt Keith (>2 Mt of contained nickel) near Leinster in Western Australia.
The project area occurs in the same geological terrain as the recently discovered Gold Road (ASX:GOR) Gruyere deposit of more than 5 million ounces of gold. The Mulga Tank project has been not well explored for gold and this will also be a focus of the forward program.
Commonwealth Project
Impact plans to carry out from October 2015 further field checking, ground geophysical and geochemical surveys at the Commonwealth high grade gold-silver-zinc-lead-copper project located 100 kilometres north of Orange, New South Wales.
All of this data will be synthesised and interpreted with the aim of completing a major drill program early in 2016.
Commonwealth has similar geological characteristics to the Woodlawn deposit near Canberra (17Mt at 1.4 g/t gold, 80 g/t silver, 9.9% zinc, 3.8% lead and 1.7% copper).
It has a current Inferred Resource of 720,000 tonnes at 2.8 g/t gold, 48 g/t silver, 1.5% zinc, 0.6% lead and 0.1% copper including 145,000 tonnes at 4.3 g/t gold, 142 g/t silver, 4.8% zinc, 1.7% lead and 0.2% copper.
This is open along trend and at depth.
Analysis
With the $1.9 million rights issue in the bag and an investment of up to $7.3 million from Squadron, Impact Minerals is cashed up to accelerate exploration at its flagship Broken Hill, Mulga Tank and Commonwealth projects.
Drilling has already started at the closely watched Red Hill prospect of Broken Hill, where the company discovered some of the highest grades of PGM ever reported in Australia in a 25 to 30 metre thick near-surface layer of PGM mineralisation.
Adding further interest, this is just one of three projects the company is carrying out exploration at over the next 12 months.
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