Equity placement worth more than £3m for rare earth refinery developer

Kwasi Kwarteng breaks ground at Pensana's Hull site

Pensana, which is developing a £150m rare earth refinery at Saltend, is to receive more than £3m worth of investment from one of its shareholders.

M&G Investment Management, a fund manager and longstanding Pensana shareholder, has agreed to invest $4m (£3.19m) in the company via a placement of 7,250,000 new ordinary shares of £0.001 each in the capital of Pensana, at a price of 44 pence per share.

Following admission of the placing shares to trading, M&G will have an interest in about 7.7% of the company’s enlarged issued share capital.

Pensana’s Saltend refinery, near Hull, will be the first major rare earth separation facility to be built in over a decade.

Once complete it will establish an independent magnet metal supply chain for the UK and beyond. It will process neodymium and praseodymium from a planned mine in Longonjo, Angola.

Rare earth oxides are used in the manufacture of powerful permanent magnets, critical to the offshore wind and electric vehicle industries.

Pensana chairman, Paul Atherley, said: “We very much appreciate M&G’s continuing support as a major shareholder over the past 12 months.

“Initial site works are underway at Saltend and Longonjo, and this additional investment will take us through to main financing and the commencement of main construction at both projects during quarter one of 2023.

“We look forward to delivering on the strong support from major shareholders and developing an independent and sustainable rare earth supply chain based in the UK to meet the burgeoning demand from automotive and wind turbine OEMs.”

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