Auroch banks $1m from delayed gold project sale

Auroch Minerals’ sale Iast year of the Manica gold project is about to come to successful conclusion and provide a handy boost to the company’s bank balance.

The clean tech metals explorer sold the Manica project in Mozambique to Xtract Resources Plc for US$12 million, with US$2.5 million placed on a deferred settlement.

Xtract was unable to make the full deferred payment on schedule, however Auroch have nursed the deal through to a successful conclusion, recouping the original sale price and interest along the way.

Auroch told the ASX this week it had received about A$1.1 million in cash by selling Xtract shares it received from the conversion of US$700,000 convertible loan.

The company also reported that Xtract had advised Auroch the outstanding balance of about A$500,000 would be paid in early December from proceeds of a capital raising announced last week.

Auroch Executive Chairman, Glenn Whiddon, said: “The receipt of the funds has maintained Auroch’s healthy cash balance and these funds will continue to fund the ongoing exploration activities of the company’s projects and the evaluation of new opportunities.”

The two payments will be a significant boost to Auroch’s already impressive cash balance of $4.2 million at the end of the September quarter.

The company has drill programs running at the Alcoutim Zinc-Copper project in Portugal and the Tisova Copper-Cobalt project as part of an aggressive clean-tech metals exploration strategy.

Both projects have produced exciting results and helped push Auroch’s share price up by 34% in the past three weeks, with more assay results to follow shortly.