BRITISH COLUMBIA - Vancouver-based BCMETALS CORP. has arranged debt financing for a portion of the development costs for its Red Chris copper-gold mine in the northwestern part of the province. It has mandated Investec Bank (UK) to provide US$110 million to be repaid over seven years beginning in year three, after a two-year construction period. Interest has been set at 2.8% during construction and 2.6% during production.
The loan is conditional on the provincial government's extension of the electric power grid to the village of Iskut, 18 km north of the mine, in time for development to meet a late-2007 deadline for first concentrate production.
The Red Chris project, as outlined in the feasibility study prepared by AMEC, is a 30,000-tonne/day open pit mine and flotation concentrator. Over the course of the currently envisaged 25-year mine life the project will produce 1.85 billion lb of copper and 1.187 million oz of gold in concentrates. Red Chris is the largest new copper-gold open pit project in North America and has already been granted its environmental assessment certificate by the British Columbia government.
Visit the company's website at www.bcMetals.com.
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