Aurumin is offering investors a bite of its two historical gold producers Pic: Getty Images
IPO Watch: Aurumin is bringing historical gold producers to the party
Mining
share
Aurumin is looking to be the next gold explorer to launch an IPO on the ASX and is betting that having two historical gold producers will draw investors.
These are the Mt Dimer project that had open pit and underground production of about 123,000oz of gold at an average grade of 6.4 grams per tonne (g/t) and the Mt Palmer project that produced 158,000oz at 15.9g/t from open pit and underground production.
To drive exploration of these projects, the company has launched an initial public offering of shares priced at 20c to raise up to $7m.
The IPO opened yesterday and is expected to close on October 30 with listing on the ASX occurring at the end of November.
Aurumin also features a well credentialled board and management team with ex-Northern Star (ASX:NST) manager of technical services Brad Valiukas taking the lead role as its managing director while fellow Northern Star alumni and current Salt Lake Potash (ASX:SO4) chief financial officer Shaun Day will serve as non-executive director.
Veteran geologist Dr Darren Holden is the other non-executive director while Piers Lewis is the company’s non-executive chairman.
Gold projects
Mt Dimer covers 290sqkm about 120km north-northeast of Southern Cross.
It was first explored by Western Mining Corporation between 1975 and 1989 and later mined by Tectonic Resources between 1994 and 1997. Gold was mined from six open pits and one underground operation.
There are immediate opportunities for resource expansion and development assessment as the Lightning deposit and extensions to the Golden Slipper open pit were defined but not mined by previous operators.
The project area also has multiple geophysical, geochemical and geological targets identified from previous studies a significant number of high-grade unmined intersections.
Mt Palmer covers 136sqkm about 39km east-southeast of Southern Cross and was mined from 1934 to 1944 over a 360m strike with individual lodes mined over a strike length of 200m and to depths of 155m from the surface.
Despite this, the project as a whole has only been lightly explored and requires a combination of brownfields and greenfields exploration.
Acquisition, consolidation and review of data is continuing.
Besides the two former producers, Aurumin also has the Johnson Range and Karramindie exploration projects.
Johnson Range is about 170km north of Southern Cross and is located close to the Evanston Mine.
The 6sqkm project was acquired by Vector Resources in 2009 with trial mining occurring in 2014.
Aurumin has been validating and assessing data and expects that a resource estimate can be progressed on the data set, although the need for confirmation drilling may be required.
The early stage Karramindie project covering 21sqkm about 20km east of Coolgardie rounds up Aurumin’s inventory.
Exploration plans
Aurumin plans to use proceeds from the IPO to complete initial exploration of its projects over the next two years.
Most of this expenditure will be on geophysics and geochemistry along with drilling and assaying at Mt Dimer and Mt Palmer.
Early stage exploration will also be carried out the Johnson Range project.
