Impact completes first tranche of share placement

Brian Benza
Staff Writer | Thursday June 11, 2009 00:00

The 11.15 million fully paid ordinary shares placed in Polo Resources by Impact Minerals is meant to raise $1.79 million (P12.53 million). The balance of the share placement to raise $1.2 million (P8.4 million) will be subject to shareholder approval at a general meeting to be held in mid-July. The ASX-listed Impact Minerals last week announced that it had reached an agreement to place 18.6 million new shares in uranium and coal mining and investment company Polo Resources at an issue price of 16.07c a share to raise $3 million. After the two phases of the placement are completed, Polo Resources will hold a 19.9 percent stake in Impact.

The share placement will be completed in two stages. Impact fully owns its Botswana uranium project, which comprises 25,000 km2 of prospecting licence that covers about 350km of the strike extensions of rocks that host uranium deposits.

Initial interpretation has identified about 20 areas with elevated surface uranium responses and other targets in regional airborne radiometric data. After fieldwork, six of these areas were identified as high priority, with widespread surface uranium anomalism in calcretes and sandstones.

Impact owns about 40 percent of the inferred resource of uranium oxide within the Nowthanna calcrete-hosted uranium deposit in Western Australia. At a cut-off grade of 0.2 kg/t uranium oxide, Impact's 40 percent share of the deposit is about 3.92-million tons at an average grade of 0.45 kg/t for a contained 1,800t or four-million pounds of uranium oxide.

Impact is undertaking exploration in southern Africa as a joint venture with the world's second-largest platinum producer, Impala Platinum (Implats). In its quarterly report for the period ending December, Impact stated that the venture will operate for a minimum period of two years. Implats will fund project generation work with up to $400,000 a year.

In return, Implats would have the first right to earn equity in any project identified.

'Projects in which Implats elects to earn an interest will require a minimum expenditure, by Implats, of $1 million before withdrawal, and a further $1-million expenditure to earn 50 percent,' the company said. Any projects generated through the joint venture, which Implats did not elect to progress with, could be fully retained by Impact.