Gold: Saracen to shell out $1.1bn for Super Pit stake, Tietto raises $17m to accelerate 2.2moz Abujar

The morning’s biggest news comes from ambitious mid-tier miner Saracen (ASX:SAR), which will pay Barrick a lazy $1.1 billion for 50 per cent of Kalgoorlie’s iconic Super Pit.

The mammoth Super Pit, which produced 490,000oz in FY2019, has about 7.3moz in reserves for a ~12-year mine life.

For those who don’t know, it looks like this:

Saracen will raise $796 million, with the balance of the purchase price funded from a new $450 million senior secured term loan.

The deal will establish the $2.8 billion miner —  up about 38 per cent over the past 12 months prior to today’s announcement — as the #4 biggest Australian producer with annual production of +600,000oz.

And it looks like money is also flowing into the small cap end of the market, with Tietto Minerals (ASX:TIE) raising $17m to accelerate resource growth at the flagship 2.2moz Abujar project in Cote D’Ivoire, West Africa.

Tietto – which is up an astounding 320 per cent in the past 12 months – has already snagged binding commitments for the placement from existing shareholders and leading global institutional investors.

Tietto managing director Dr Caigen Wang said 2019 has been a year of phenomenal success.

“The recent upgrade of our resources to 2.2Moz, and a large number of high grade and shallow gold intersections being reported over the past few months, [suggest] excellent potential for a future high-margin mining operation,” he says.

“Our full focus is on adding high grade ounces to the resource as rapidly as possible and we have ordered a 4th diamond rig to add to our existing fleet of company-owned rigs.”

READ MORE about Tietto:

Tietto ‘ticking all the boxes’ ahead of big resource boost at 1.7moz Abujar project

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