The new chief executive of mining group Tungsten West believes the “essential nature of critical minerals supply chain security” provides the confidence the business will secure the funding it needs to bring the site back into production.<\/p>\n
Tungsten West is focused on restarting commercial operations at the Hemerdon tungsten and tin mine.<\/p>\n
Jeff Court joined the company in October after previous boss Neil Gawthorpe departed in June.<\/p>\n
In a half-year update to shareholders, He said: “The company’s primary focus, following the major milestone of the Environment Agency granting the permit to operate the MPF [Mineral Processing Facility], has been the updating of the project’s re-start economic assessment, focusing on further de-risking the core project and making it more robust against a range of key external scenarios.”<\/p>\n
The business has raised \u00a315.3m through its convertible loan note facility.<\/p>\n
Its core group of stakeholders have provisionally committed to provide a further \u00a32.8m in two parts over the next two months.<\/p>\n
A future tranche of funding, known as Tranche G, is expected to complete before the end of 2025. But the group warned that if it fails to find purchases for those notes, or raise alternative finance, it “would no longer be able to meet its liabilities as they fall due”.<\/p>\n
Court added: “We remain grateful to those key supporters who have kept the company funded and have enabled us to progress the studies and engineering work required to update the MPF.<\/p>\n
“The current national and international dialogue surrounding the essential nature of critical minerals supply chain security has highlighted the importance of Hemerdon to governments and other key stakeholders.<\/p>\n
“This has given us confidence that the funding capital needed to bring Hemerdon back into production will be available to us following the completion of the Feasibility Study.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Devon site has ambition of restarting commercial operations<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":18275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120781],"coauthors":[81],"class_list":["post-18273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-markets","tag-devon","tag-featured-story"],"yoast_head":"\n