A decade at the top: Peel to raise $23m to open new era of copper growth

Peel Mining (ASX:PEX) is raising up to $23m to fast track further growth at its South Cobar project, with a focus on developing a 10-year copper operation.

The company has already received binding commitments for a $21m placement of shares priced at 18c each and will raise the remaining $2m through a share purchase plan for existing eligible shareholders.

Josh Pitt will cornerstone the placement with a $3.6m investment.

Pitt is the founder and major shareholder at Red Hill (ASX:RHI) which recently sold its Red Hill Iron Ore JV interest to Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) for more than $400m in cash milestone payments and royalties.

As part of the placement, Peel will appoint experienced mining director Mark Okeby as its chairman while current executive director Jim Simpson will move to a full time role as chief executive officer and managing director.

Driving copper growth

Proceeds from the placement and SPP will be used to expand and delineate resources at the South Cobar copper project.

A technical review on Mallee Bull and Wirlong has indicated the project’s potential for growth, given their geology is analogous to the CSA mine about 100km to the north. CSA has been the subject of an intense bidding war between IGO Ltd and NYSE-listed Metals Acquisition Corp, with the winning bid expected to be north of $1 billion.

Resource growth is also likely given that the mineralisation is open at depth and along strike while drilling has already returned high-grade hits outside of the current resource envelope.

Mallee Bull hosts a resource of 6.76Mt at 1.8% copper, 31g/t silver, 0.4g/t gold, 0.6% lead and 0.6% zinc (2.6%CuEq), or 119,000t of contained copper and 175,000t of copper equivalent metal, while Wirlong has a resource of 2.45Mt at 2.4% Cu and 8.7g/t Ag containing 57,900t copper and 686,000oz of silver.

Board and management appointments

Simpson has a wealth of experience in developing and operating underground base metal and gold mines and significant mining company board and management experience.

He was the CEO and managing director of Aurelia Metals from 2016 to 2019 during which time it acquired the Peak gold mine and made the Federation and Dominion discoveries, seeing the share price increased close to ten-fold.

Prior to that, he was the chief operating officer of Peak Gold, director of Goldcorp Asia Pacific, general manager mining lead and zinc at MIM Holdings and mine manager at Golden Grove for Normandy Mining.

Okeby has over 30 years’ experience as a director of ASX listed mining and exploration companies.

He is currently a director of Red Hill Iron and Capricorn Metals, which has seen its share price increase nearly 5-fold since he joined the board, and was previously a director of Regis Resources, Hill 50, Abelle, Metals X Limited and Westgold Resources.

This article was developed in collaboration with Peel Mining, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.