re: monto confident of raising funds
Monto confident of raising funds Email Print Normal font Large font April 25, 2006 - 8:09PM
Advertisement AdvertisementSand miner Monto Minerals has growing confidence of raising the funds to build a plant at the company's industrial minerals project in central Queensland.
Chief executive Geoff Moore, who has spent the past three months in London preparing Monto for listing on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), said the company had received a good reception from European investors and they had shown an immediate understanding of the project.
"We're over here to raise STG17 million ($A40.76 million) and listing on the AIM," Mr Moore said.
"(We have) growing confidence that the money's there; that there's recognition that this is a viable and worthwhile deposit."
He said European investors understood industrial minerals better than their Australian counterparts because the market was much bigger.
"There's a lot more people there (in Europe) to use glass, and paint and paper and ceramics," he said.
"Australia doesn't really have a feel for industrial minerals."
He said unlike other minerals such as gold that were sold on commodity markets, industrial minerals were sold to manufacturers.
Monto plans to mine feldspar, which is used in making glass and paint; apatite, a mineral that goes into organic fertiliser; titanomagnetite, an agent used in washing coal, and ilmenite, at the Goondicum Crater Project, about 90 kilometres west of Bundaberg.
Mr Moore said Monto had presented to about 40 investors, two-thirds of them in the UK and the rest in Europe.
The company expects to list on the AIM mid-next month, and hopes to begin construction immediately.
"We're hoping to be in production about next March," Mr Wood said.
"We're coming on at a scale that we can sell our product."
He said about 50 per cent of production in the first few years was accounted for in conditional commitments.
MOO Price at posting:
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