Bezant raises £0.8m as its seeks to progress Philippines project

Copper-gold exploration and development company Bezant has raised £0.8m before expenses through a subscription and placing of 222,222,222 new ordinary shares at a price of 0.36p per share, it announced on Thursday.

The AIM-traded firm said the fundraising comprised a placing of 208,333,333 new ordinary shares via its broker Novum Securities, and a subscription by Colin Bird - Bezant's executive chairman - who invested £50,000 to subscribe for 13,888,889 new ordinary shares, representing 6.25% of the total fundraising amount.

As a result, following completion of the fundraising, Bezant said Bird would be interested in 25,000,000 ordinary shares, representing 2.5% of the company's enlarged share capital.

It said the net proceeds from the fundraising will primarily be used to progress its Mankayan copper-gold project, located on the Island of Luzon in the Philippines.

That would include the commissioning of a further update and optimisation of the historical third party scoping study, together with onsite community development work and the necessary activities to advance a drilling programme targeting resource confirmation and potential extension.

Bezant's board said it believed that the Mankayan Project was already a forerunner in the prospective global copper-gold arena, and anticipated that the project would be enhanced and even better placed following completion of the planned work programme.

The company said it would also use a portion of the net proceeds on activities aimed at increasing the confidence in, and decreasing risk at, its Eureka project in Argentina, which was likely to include a small-scale geophysics programme.

It said the balance of the net proceeds would be used for general working capital purposes.

“The additional funds secured today will support the company as it seeks to build value from a series of operational workstreams, primarily on its Mankayan copper-gold asset in the Philippines, following the recent renewal of the project's mineral production sharing agreement to April 2020,” said CEO Laurence Read.

“Reassessment of the existing Mankayan engineering studies and a focus on the last, high-grade copper-gold intersections drilled by Goldfields will be key objectives.

“We shall also look to continue our assessment of the Eureka copper-gold project in Argentina and progress discussions with industrial groups in relation to the company's asset portfolio in-country, which hosts a potential world class copper-gold resource.”