Geopacific secures F$156million for project
Geopacific Resources Limited has secured AU$100 million (FJ$156 million) for the construction of its gold and silver mine on Woodlark
Island, in Papua
New Guinea.
Chairman Ian
Clyne confirmed securing the funding through a debt facility.
Geopacific Resources formely operated as the largest licence holder in Fiji, before it closed shop in 2020 to focus on Woodlark.
In Fiji, the company had five projects located on Viti Levu and Vanua Levu.
The Nabila, Rakiraki, Sabeto and Vuda Projects were in the highly-prospective northeast trending zone that also hosted the worldclass Vatukoula and Mt Kasi gold mines.
Geopacific Resources owned the licence for Faddy’s prospect at Nabila, now held by Viti Mining for Alice Queen.
The Nabila site showed copper, zinc and gold
Geopacific Resources was the largest licence holder in Fiji during its time, with five projects located on the two main islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu.
traces.
Meanwhile, Mr Clyne said the debt facility enabled Geopacific Resources to achieve “full funding” to start construction with a view to pouring first gold next year.
He said the Kula Gold legacy where international investors had suffered significant losses meant that there was less appetite for the Woodlark Project specifically.
This is despite significant marketing efforts to banks and specialist sector lenders there was also extremely limited debt appetite.
The major factors were the international concern on PNG’s political risk.
Mr Clyne said the successful and timely execution of an agreement was a major confidence booster to the international investor market.
“The professionalism of the Papua New Guinea government teams was a major factor,” he said.
“This was an extremely difficult project to get funded, especially given the PNG/BSP perspective of historic international investor and lender appetite.”
Mineral Resources Authority managing director, Jerry Garry, welcomed Geopacific’s securing funding for the project construction.
He said the move indicted investor confidence in the country’s extractive sector.
Mr Garry noted that Geopacific Resources had improved its housing designs for the relocation exercise following MRA’s intervention.
“To raise AU$140 million (FJ$234 million) in new equity in December/January, and to recently close out the AU$100 million (FJ$156 million) debt facility were the results of a massive amount of extremely professional work by Tim Richards (Geopacific Resources Ltd chief executive officer) and his team, and with the board’s backing, in building international financial market’s confidence,” Mr Garry said.