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Investors swamped the IPO so how will Manuka’s debut go?
Mining
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Special Report: Another indicator of Investor appetite for precious metals stories will be provided today when Manuka Resources, the first mining IPO to be completed this year, lists on the Australian Securities Exchange.
Manuka, which owns the Mt Boppy gold project and the Wonawinta silver project in the Cobar Basin in New South Wales, was inundated with demand when it opened its IPO in early June and within less than 48 hours had taken applications for the maximum $7 million it was seeking.
Commenting on the imminent listing, executive chairman Dennis Karp said: “Today is the culmination of much hard work dating back to 2015 when we commenced the process for acquiring Wonawinta, but it is also just the beginning of the Manuka story as a listed entity.
“We are already in production, having poured first gold in early May following an April restart of our own processing plant, and we have a firm plan for increasing our resource inventory and setting the company up for growth and further success.”
First gold was produced from stockpiled Mt Boppy ore treated through the 850,000 tonne per annum Wonawinta plant that together with associated infrastructure has cost more than $120 million.
Manuka anticipates recovering 22,000-24,000 ounces of gold from stockpiles and mined Mt Boppy ore over the next 12 months.
Proceeds from the sale of this gold is expected to allow the company to extinguish its current debt of $24.5 million.
Much like Mt Boppy, Wonawinta contains a significant amount of silver in stockpiles that the company intends to start processing in the June quarter of next year.
The third phase of activity, planned to start in the March quarter 2022, would be mining and processing of the shallow (<60m) oxide resource at Wonawinta.
Including the stockpiles and shallow oxide material, total JORC compliant resources at Wonawinta amount to 38.8 million tonnes at 42 g/t silver for 52.4 million ounces.
Within this is a higher grade component of 4.5 million tonnes at 97 g/t silver for 14 million ounces.
Manuka also holds a tenement package of more than 1,126km2 in the Cobar Basin that contains significant exploration potential.
Within the first six months of listing, the company intends to drill a number of high conviction targets not only at and around Mt Boppy and Wonawinta but within the broader tenement package.
Manuka , which was formed by resources industry financier ResCap Investments, will have a market capitalisation of almost $50 million upon listing.
ResCap has seen its interest in the company reduce to 36.2% through the IPO process, while all the convertible note holders have converted to ordinary Manuka shares.
There have been six IPOs completed in other sectors this year, but the only other new mining company to list has been Cobre Limited, which completed its IPO last year and listed in January.
