At least five miners are working to wrap up pre-Christmas IPOs in a bid to ring in the new year as listed companies with plenty of cash in the kitty.

An increase in the number of successful Initial Public Offerings in 2017 is a strong indicator that investor appetite is returning to the resources sector after a prolonged downturn. The number of IPOs in 2017 is already double that of 2016 — with about 20 so far this year.

Tietto Minerals, which is aiming for a December 19 listing, has already raised the maximum $7.5 million it was targeting in its IPO, which opened less than a week ago, chairman Francis Harper told Stockhead.

Tietto was founded in 2010 to explore for gold in West Africa — in particular focusing on Liberia and the Ivory Coast — and until now has been privately funded by a group of wealthy investors.

“Most of the ground in Ivory Coast was picked up in 2014 and 2015 and there were periods where the gold price was really depressed,” Mr Harper said.

“Juniors were not raising any money in total contrast to today, when there’s a deal every three seconds. Every mining broker in Australia seems to be doing a placement on an almost daily basis.”

Tietto already has a resource of 703,600 ounces at 2.1 grams of gold per tonne, which is considered an economic grade to mine.

“We do have already a shallow resource down to an average depth of 170m at 2.1 grams along a 2.6km strike length,” Mr Harper said.

“So it should be relatively straight forward for us to double the depth of this from 170m to 340m and, if you take simple arithmetic, then you’ll double your resource to nearly 1.5 million ounces if the mineralisation persists at depth, which we certainly think it will given the drilling we’ve done so far.

“And that’s just along a 2.6km strike length.”

Tietto has 26km to 30km of artisanal workings and a parallel sheer zone about 2km to the west, which has not been touched.

“The prospectivity is very high for adding to the ounces,” Mr Harper said.

Tietto plans to undertake 30,000m of drilling in 2018 with the aim of delivering a resource upgrade before the end of the year.

Also hoping to join the ranks of ASX-listed resources companies before the year is out is Carawine Resources, which was spun out of Sheffield Resources (ASX:SFX) to hold the company’s Australian gold and base metals assets.

Carawine is aiming to light up the boards around December 12 following the completion of an IPO targeting $5 to $6 million.

BlackEarth Minerals, meanwhile, was demerged from Lithium Australia (ASX:LIT) to focus on its graphite projects in Western Australia and Madagascar, and is aiming to list around December 22.

The company is looking to raise up to $6 million under its IPO, which opens November 23 and closes December 14.

Western Australia-focused gold explorer AIC Resources has launched an IPO to raise between $7 million and $10 million to undertake exploration of its Marymia project.

The company is hoping for a December 11 listing, with its IPO due to close on December 1.

Frontier Diamonds was aiming to list by November 27, but has extended its IPO to raise at least $4 million to December 8.

The company’s focus is on restarting the Star and Sedibeng diamond mines in South Africa, which it acquired from Petra Diamonds in 2014.

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