Todd River Resources’ share price hiked more than 8 per cent in ASX trade after the company finalised a $3.3 million capital raise, landing high profile fund manager Acorn Capital as cornerstone investor in the process. The flourishing WA nickel explorer is set to kick off a raft of exploration in the coming weeks across its highly prospective targets throughout the nickel-bearing terranes of Western Australia.
Notably, the company also completed the raise at a premium to the 10-day volume weighted average price, with a combination of funds, sophisticated investors and larger existing shareholders paying $0.055 per share.
The addition of Melbourne-based Acorn Capital to the registry is particularly interesting. The specialist resources fund is renown as a tough nut to crack and its investment into Todd River puts the spotlight on the company’s highly prospective suite of projects.
The company has earmarked the proceeds of the capital raise to finance its ongoing nickel and copper exploration, with drilling at its ‘Julimar-style’ Berkshire Valley project scheduled to kick off in March. Exploration will then move to Nanutarra, near Onslow in May whilst the company has also flagged putting boots on the ground in the Petermann Ranges near the WA-NT border in the coming months.
Todd River Resources Managing Director, Will Dix said:“This capital raising places the Company in a strong financial position to rapidly progress exploration activities on our Berkshire Valley, Nanutarra and Petermann Range projects with aircore drilling scheduled to commence at Berkshire Valley in March 2021.”
Todd River’s immediate focus will be on its Berkshire Valley project about 150 kilometres to the north-east of Perth and immediately to the east of the wheat-belt town of Moora. The company’s tenure is situated in the same geological terrane as the spectacular Julimar nickel-PGE discovery, which sits around 100km to the south, covering a string of mafic-ultramafic intrusions that extend along an impressive 40km of strike.
Historical exploration over the Berkshire terrane included detailed soil sampling and wide-spaced auger and roadside aircore drilling, which uncovered several large multi-element anomalies to the north-east of Moora. The new targets have received limited drill testing and remain a significant opportunity for Todd River due to the presence of extensive nickel-copper-PGE mineralisation.
A nickel-copper-PGE anomalism in the southern project area stretches over more than 8km of strike, with a large PGE anomaly defined over 1.8km in the central survey area.
Recent moving loop electromagnetic surveys undertaken by Todd River over the surveyed areas have returned a subtle anomaly over the main nickel-PGE geochemical target which perhaps indicates a deeper massive sulphide source or hints at the presence of other elusive styles of sulphide mineralisation. The enticing target now has a date with the drill bit as exploration kicks off in earnest in the coming weeks.
With Todd River now sporting a cash balance of over $3 million and the nickel price closing in on decade highs at over US$19,000 a tonne, Todd River is well placed to reinforce Acorn’s hard-earned reputation as an astute market player.
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