Lepanto plans P1.75 B stock rights offering

Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co. plans to raise P1.75 billion through a stock rights offering to resume its copper and gold production.

In a disclosure to the local bourse, Lepanto said the additional capital to be raised would be used for further exploration and development of its copper and gold project, purchase of mining equipment and settlement of debt and pension obligations.

“The board of directors ap- proved an offer of one share for every 4.685 shares held at P0.15 per share or a total of 11.7 billion shares from the company’s unissued authorized capital,” Lepanto said.

The planned fund raising activity will commence upon approval of the Philippine Stock Exchange on the listing application.

Last week, Lepanto said it would start production from its Benguet copper-gold project in the third quarter of the year.

According to Lepanto, ongoing drilling revealed previ- ously unrecognized gold-bearing vein systems, comprised of quartz, pyrite and gold, in five areas of its copper-gold project located next to its Victoria gold project in Benguet.

“We will resume copper and concentrate production following two years of drilling, metallurgical tests and rehabilitation of our copper flotation plant which is being debugged and will be operated to produce gold and silver-bearing copper concentrate, alongside the carbon-in-pulp plant that will continue to produce gold ore,” Lepanto said.

Initial run-of-mine production from Victoria and the copper gold project is 1,500 tons per day. Plans include ramping it up to 1,900 TPD by year-end and 3,000 TPD by 2019.

Exploration started in October 2015. It has so far completed 41,000 meters of underground drilling to evaluate the coppergold project resources at the former enargite mining area.

Lepanto has discovered combined indicated and inferred resources of 6.67 metric tons (MT) with a copper grade of 0.99 percent and gold content of 2.16 gram per ton.

Ongoing drilling has since identified additional resource of 7.9 MT at 1.69 percent copper grade and 2.07 grams per ton of gold.

The company, which operates in Benguet, is primarily engaged in the exploration and mining of gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc and all kinds of ores, metals, minerals, oil, gas, coal and their related byproducts.

Lepanto sells its production to Hong-Kong, Canada, Peru and China, among others.