Osino raising $10 million for Namibia gold mine
Osino Resources Corp. [OSI-TSXV, RSR1-FSE] said Wednesday it has received commitments allowing it to complete a non brokered private placement that is expected to raise $10 million, priced at 80 cents per share.
The company said it plans to use the proceeds to fund exploration and development expenses at the company’s Twin Hills gold project and other exploration projects in Namibia ahead of the commencement of construction.
Osino says it has a commanding ground position of approximately 6,900 square kilometres located within Namibia’s prospective Damara sedimentary mineral belt, mostly in proximity to and along strike of the producing Navachab and Otjikoto Gold Mines.
The company recently tabled results of a pre-feasibility study (PFS) for its Twin Hills. It is a sedimentary-hosted, structurally controlled gold deposit that fits the broad orogenic model and is amenable to conventional open-pit gold mining and carbon-in-leach metallurgical processing.
According to the PFS, the project is capable of producing an average of 169,000 ounces of gold during the first 10 years of what is expected to be a 13-year lifespan. The life-of-mine average all-in-sustaining cost is expected to be US$939 an ounce.
The required project capital (including contingency) is expected to be US$375 million.
The PFS is based on a measured and indicated mineral resource of 81.3 million tonnes at 1.08 g/t gold or 2.83 million ounces. On top of that is an inferred resource of 7.2 million tonnes at 1.05 g/t gold or 24,000 ounces The company has said 212,184 metres of drilling from 1,016 holes has been completed at Twin Hills since 2019 and was used for the resource estimate.
Total proven and probable reserves stand at 2.15 million ounces.
The company said the orebody will be mined as a conventional shovel and truck operation, with bulk mining augmented by more selective mining in areas with narrow ore zones. “It was assumed that mining would take place by conventional open pit methods and that the whole mining operation, except for the mine technical services function, would be outsourced to a reputable mining contractor,’’ the company said.
On November 22, 2022, Osino shares closed at 90 cents. The shares are currently trading in a 52-week range of $1.38 and 52 cents.
Since its grassroots discovery in 2019, the company has completed more than 200,000 metres of drilling and advanced technical studies on the Twin Hills project, culminating in a recently published pre-feasibility study.
Osino’s co-founder, President and CEO Heye Daun has said Twin Hills is geologically consistent, metallurgically simple and technically low risk with a low capital intensity and significant future upside. “We are proud to have been able to deliver the PFS within three years of discovery and our vision for the next year is to optimize and improve the project further and to continue to advance Twin Hills to the construction stage,” he said.