Image Resources’ Boonanarring mineral sands project north of Perth in Western Australia is now valued at $235 million, a 19 per cent increase from its November’s $197 million pre-tax valuation.
The increase in project value is a response to climbing zircon price forecasts, shown to be steadily rising from 2018 through to 2022 in Image’s bankable feasibility study.
While the project has an estimated capital expenditure of $52 million, Image successfully obtained a $50 million project capital from Pala Investments and Castlelake last month.
The company has also secured a binding off-take agreement for 100 per cent of its products and revenue, thus predicting a positive cash flow by the first quarter of 2019 – all corporate overhead and minimum exploration expenditure accounted for.
Image started construction of Boonanarring in mid-March this year and expects to launch production by the fourth quarter of 2018.
The project construction includes a solar farm supplied by Sunrise Energy Group, making Image one of the pioneering Western Australian companies to adopt distributed renewable electricity generation. The solar farm will provide around 25 per cent of Image’s electricity requirements at Boonanarring.
The Boonanarring project is particularly rich with zircon, and is considered one of Australia’s top undeveloped high-grade mineral sands projects.
