Financing for Runruno mining project firming up

Metals Exploration Plc is in the thick of negotiations with banks and financial institutions as part of its campaign to bring the Runruno gold-molybdenum project in Nueva Vizcaya to production.

The Australian firm said in its quarterly project update posted on its website that it is currently engaged in “detailed discussions” with various banks and alternative funding sources to finalize a debt funding package on a “project finance basis.”

“The company has progressed to detailed diligence with one of these potential funders and it is being assisted in all of these endeavors by an experienced advisor,” according to the project update.

Metals Exploration said it intends to finalize a package in the first quarter of 2012.

In the meantime, early mine site works and preparations for building a processing plant have been ongoing since December 2011. Full construction will start as soon as Metals Exploration secures project financing.

“It has been a very rewarding and significant quarter with the issue of the DMPF (declaration of mining project feasibility), approval of a package of early site works and indeed the initiation of those works with the commencement of earthworks on the processing plant site. To see the daily changes at site as the work proceeds, demonstrates the reality of the Runruno project,” Metals Exploration executive chair Ian Holzberger said in a statement.

Runruno, which covers a 3,091-hectare site, is set to start commercial production in the second half of 2013.