Tungsten West PLC, owner of the world-class Hemerdon tungsten-tin deposit in South Devon, plans to list on London’s Alternative Investment Market on October 21.
The company plans to raise an unspecified amount of capital through the initial public offering to be used to restart production at the Hemerdon mine. Under its previous owners, the mine was operational between 2015 and 2018 before the project went into receivership.
Hemerdon is the world's third-largest tungsten mineral resource, with a JORC-compliant resource estimate of approximately 325 million tonnes at 0.12% tungsten trioxide and 0.03% tin.
The company, which was set up as a special purpose vehicle to purchase Hemerdon, plans to use the funding for several process plant upgrades, which are expected to significantly improve the efficiency of the plant, and complete some improvement works initiated by the former operator as well as undertaking the full refurbishment of the existing plant structure.
The group said it has conditionally secured a project finance facility from Orion Resource Partners to provide the balance of the funding required to finance the capital expenditure and working capital required to resume mining operations.
Tungsten West's business plan also includes selling the significant volumes of aggregates that are produced as a by-product from the primary mining operations at Hemerdon, which was historically treated as a waste product from operations.
It has also conditionally entered into offtake arrangements with Wolfram Bergbau and Hütten AG and Global Tungsten & Powders Corp for the sale of tungsten and with Afrimet Resources AG for the sale of tin.
Tungsten West bought the Hemerdon mine out of receivership in 2019 for £5.4mln.