Geopacific secures K257mil for project

By GYNNIE KERO
THE Geopacific Resources Ltd has secured AU$100 million (K257.5mil) for the construction of its gold and silver mine on Woodlark Island, Milne Bay.
Chairman Ian Clyne confirmed securing the funding through a debt facility.
He thanked the Mineral Resources Authority for its efforts in facilitating the successful development of the Woodlark Island gold project
He said it enabled Geopacific Resources to achieve “full funding” to start construction with a view to pouring first gold next year.
Clyne said the Kula Gold legacy where international investors had suffered significant losses meant that there was less appetite for the Woodlark Project specifically.
This is despite significant marketing efforts to banks and specialist sector lenders there was also extremely limited debt appetite.
The major factors were the international concern on PNG’s political risk.
Clyne said the successful and timely execution of an agreement was a major confidence booster to the international investor market.
“The professionalism of the PNG Government teams was a major factor,” he said.
“This was an extremely difficult project to get funded, especially given the PNG/BSP perspective of historic international investor and lender appetite.”
MRA managing director Jerry Garry welcomed Geopacific’s securing funding for the project construction.
He said this meant investors still had confidence in the country’s extractive sector.
Garry noted that Geopacific Resources had improved its housing designs for the relocation exercise following MRA’s intervention.
“To raise AU$140 million (K54.3mil) in new equity in Dec/Jan and to recently close out the AU$100 million (K257.7mil) debt facility were the result of a massive amount of extremely professional work by Tim Richards (Geopacific Resources Ltd chief executive officer) and his team and with the board’s backing, in building international financial market’s confidence,” Garry said.