New Century Resources Limited says it has secured a $40 million debt and bank guarantee facility with National Australia Bank for its Lawn Hill mine.
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New Century told the ASX last week they secured the loan after an extensive process of technical, commercial and legal due diligence by NAB.
“The facility is believed to represent the first project debt financing package provided for a mine rehabilitation and tailings reprocessing operation by a big four Australian bank, further demonstrating the robust economic value proposition associated with the operations at Century,” the company told the ASX.
New Century Managing Director Patrick Walta was delighted with the new debt facility.
“It is fantastic to partner with NAB in the execution of New Century’s strategy to capitalise on the strong value proposition presented by the Century assets,” Mr Walta said.
“The facility provides a great opportunity to grow our business and ultimately maximise value creation for shareholders.”
New Century plans to utilise the facility to expedite plans for expansion to full production rate. As outlined in the Restart Feasibility Study released in November 2017 New Century’s strategy for the ramp up of operations consists of two phases.
Phase 1 is the $50 million initial refurbishment of the southern train of the Processing Plant and supporting infrastructure to bring operations to a capacity of 8Mtpa.
With that plant now in operation the company is looking at the $63 million Phase 2 which is the refurbishment of the northern train of the Processing Plant and further supporting infrastructure to bring operations to a full capacity of 15Mtpa by the end of 2019.
New Century has also identified opportunities to fast track the ramp up timeline via earlier financial commitment to northern train float cell refurbishment and ordering of long lead items.
The company said the NAB debt facility will allow them the ability to commit to these items without delaying for sufficient cashflow from current operations.
The Century Mine, 350km north west of Mount Isa, ramping up to become one of the world’s top 10 zinc producers.
The Company is upgrading the Mine’s existing world-class infrastructure including a large scale multi train flotation plant, 700-person camp, private airport, grid power connection, 304km slurry pipeline, port facility and concentrate transhipment vessel.
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