Investors, including new substantial international investor Virtue Investment Corporation, have demonstrated their confidence in Widgie by subscribing for $12m worth of shares priced at 26c.
Following settlement of the placement, VIC – a subsidiary of Ascend Global Investment Fund SPC – will hold a 9.9% interest in the company by investing in $7.66m worth of shares.
Ascend Global Investment Fund SPC itself is managed by Singapore- incorporated Ascend Capital Advisors, which has assets under management of US$1.2bn as of December 2022.
Widgie Nickel (ASX:WIN) also received strong support from other new and existing institutional and sophisticated investors.
“We are delighted with the support for the placement and the addition of a number of new highly credentialed investors, including VIC, to the register,” managing director Steve Norregaard said.
“We look forward to putting these funds to work with several exciting advancements in train including commercialisation of our nickel and recently discovered lithium endowment and ongoing exploration activities on our highly prospective Mt Edwards project tenure.”
VIC director Mulyadi Tjandra added that the corporation saw tremendous value in Widgie and looked forward to being a part of the development of Mt Edwards.
Mt Edwards project
Widgie has been progressing the nickel and lithium assets within the Mt Edwards Project:
Lithium
Just two weeks ago Widgie lodged its mining proposal for its Faraday Lithium deposit. Since discovery just over 6 months ago drilling has confirmed the consistent presence of shallow, lithium-bearing pegmatites at the Faraday deposit, which has in turn led to the definition of a maiden resource of 481,000t grading 0.59% Li2O in the Starter Pit location.
The Starter Pit is expected to be ready to produce direct shipping ore in the second half of this year with significant potential for additional lithium growth through both expansion of Faraday and exploration across its broader tenure.
The starter lithium operation is expected to be a low-cost mining operation, with minimal strip ratio, due to its shallow dip and the outcropping nature of the resource.
Additionally, the Faraday resource remains unconstrained with field mapping confirming the pegmatite extends at least 300m further to the north of the maiden resource envelope, more than doubling the potential strike extent of the deposit.
Nickel
Widgie continues drilling and evaluation of its nickel resources and is set to add to its existing substantial resource base of approximately 168,000t of contained nickel.
Recent drilling continues to discover new additional mineralisation, including the recent success south of the Gillett resource where drilling returned results such as 30m at 1.17% nickel, 0.14% copper, 0.03% cobalt, 0.04 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, 0.11g/t palladium and 0.09g/t platinum from 214m indicates that there is plenty of potential to unlock significant additional nickel resources.
This article was developed in collaboration with Widgie Nickel, 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.