With the mighty Thunderbird mineral sands project its primary focus, Sheffield Resources will spin-out its secondary gold and base metal assets into a new $7 million initial public offering.
Sheffield (ASX:SFX) will demerge assets held by its subsidiary Carawine Resources. Carawine will then float after raising up to $7 million by selling shares at 20c apiece.
Sheffield will also distribute the 20 million shares it holds in Carawine to shareholders.
Carawine’s suite of exploration projects include the wholly owned Jamieson gold-copper-silver-zinc project in Victoria, the Oakover copper-cobalt project and the Paterson copper-cobalt and gold-copper project in Western Australia.
Carawine also owns 49 per cent stake in the Fraser Range nickel-copper-cobalt-gold project. Independence Group owns the remaining 51 per cent and is earning 70 per cent by spending $5 million on exploration over 5 years.
The IPO is subject to Sheffield shareholders approving the spin-out at its annual general meeting on November 22.
If all goes to plan, trading of shares will begin on December 12.
“With Thunderbird being Sheffield’s primary focus, the board considers it appropriate to spin-out the high quality Carawine assets into an independent exploration company where their true value can be realised,” Sheffield managing director Bruce McFadzean told investors.
Carawine’s strategy after listing is to begin a drilling program at the Jamieson project, and advance copper-cobalt targets on the Oakover project to drill-ready status.
Jamieson contains the high-grade Hill 800 gold prospect, where drilling by previous explorers returned high- grade gold results including 33 metres at 4.31 grams per tonne gold from surface.
Carawine’s copper-cobalt targets on the Oakover project include the Western Star prospect, where samples from outcrop and historic workings have returned copper values of up to 44.5 per cent and cobalt values of up to 0.14 per cent.
Sheffield, which has been going hammer and tongs at Thunderbird having recently locked in $US200 million ($255 million) debt funding and appointing preferred contractor GR Engineering, finished yesterday at 84c.