Mining company Emerita Resources has announced a private placement of 15 million Canadian dollars (around 9.25 million euros) to finance the expansion of exploration and development activities at its operations in Spain. It will also use part of this sum for corporate and working capital purposes.

Based in Canada, Emerita is a natural resource company focused on acquiring, exploring and developing mineral properties in Europe, and with a particular focus on Spain, where it has a headquarters in the city of Seville. It currently has three large projects underway to exploit the Iberian Pyrite Belt, mainly in the provinces of Huelva and Seville.

Confirmed participant
The private placement will consist of offering up to 14,285,800 ordinary shares in Emerita Resources at a price of $1.05 (0.65 euros) per unit. If the full package were placed, it would raise 15,000,090 Canadian dollars (9,285,770 euros). Eric Sprott, one of Emerita’s largest shareholders, has already announced that he will participate in this offering with an order equivalent to $5 million.

For every two ordinary shares, purchasers will acquire the right to purchase one ordinary share at a price of $1.30 (0.8 euros), which can be exercised for 24 months after the closing date of the transaction.

Extended loan
In addition to the share placement, Emerita has agreed a fourth loan tranche with Nebari Natural Resources, which will add 35 million Canadian dollars (21.56 million euros) to its financing, and which, added to the previous three tranches, will give the mining company access to a total of $50 million (30.79 million euros). So far, only the first tranche of $6 million  (3.7 million euros) has been made available. This financial support backs its projects in Spain, although for the time being the company “is in a very strong financial position and does not plan to use the extended Nebari loan in the short term”, according to CEO David Gower.

The funds from the extended loan will be used to cover capital needs relating to exploration and geological drilling, advancement of engineering studies, environmental permitting on the IBW project, deposits for projects with long lead times, and general and administrative costs.

Four months ago, Emerita Resources published a technical report that increased the estimated resources at its La Romanera, La Infanta and El Cura operations by 35%, and theinferred resources by 44%. These three deposits contain copper, zinc, lead, silver and gold.

^{Photo: Emerita Resources}