Minefinders (MFL-T, MFN-X) has closed a $66-million bought-deal financing that it will use to help repay debt and further development at its La Bolsa gold silver project in Sonora, Mexico and the Dolores open pit heap leach gold-silver mine in Chihuahua, Mexico.
Under the terms of the deal, Minefinders is offering 6.2 million shares at a price of $10.65 per share.
BMO Capital Markets and Scotia Capital were the lead underwriters; all of whom have an option to buy an additional 900,000 shares to cover over-allotments.
Minefinders has recently released an initial National Instrument 43-101 resource estimate for its La Bolsa project, where work for a prefeasibility study is also being completed.
Measured and indicated resources stand at 17.7 million tonnes grading 0.658 gram gold per tonne and 8.9 grams silver for 373,000 oz. gold and 5 million oz. silver (using a cutoff grade of 0.2 gram gold per tonne).
Inferred resources stand at 4 million tonnes grading 0.4 gram gold and 4.2 grams silver for 56,000 oz. gold and 558,000 oz. silver.
Company president, Mark Bailey, says there are two diamond drill rigs and one reverse-circulation that are still being operated at La Bolsa to further increase the resource estimate. After that, a potential mine schedule will be determined for the upcoming prefeasibility study, which should be released in January 2010.
Minefinders is also working to expand resources at the Dolores mine, where commercial production was declared in May this year. A prefeasibility study is being done to test the potential for a flotation mill to enhance recoveries from high-grade ore in the open pit, to process underground ore and to increase production capacity.
Dolores is an 18,000-tonne-per-day operation with a 15.5 year mine life. Production is expected to total nearly 1.8 million oz. gold and 64.3 million oz. silver in that time.
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