Vancouver-based Mercator Minerals has acquired Creston Moly Corp. in a stock and cash deal amounting to C$195 million, Mercator announced Tuesday in a press release.
Under the arrangement, Creston shareholders will receive 0.15 of a Mercator common share and $0.08 in cash, for each common share of Creston — representing a respective 43% and 40% premium on the companies’ share prices as of market close on Friday.
Creston owns a 100% interest in El Creston, an advanced moly-copper project located in Sonora, Mexico. Acquiring the project, which has 336 million pounds of molybdenum and 281 million pounds of copper, will increase Mercator’s measured and indicated moly resources by 85%, to 732 million pounds. Mercator’s copper-equivalent resources will go up by 38%, to 7.781 billion pounds.
A recent PEA on El Creston says the project is expected to generate average annual production of approximately 24 million pounds of molybdenum and approximately 16 million pounds of copper over a 13-year mine life, based on a moly price of US$15 per pound and a copper price of US$2.60 per pound.
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Mercator embarked on a two-phase expansion of its Mineral Park operations in Arizona, to a 50,000 ton per day copper and molybdenum milling operation, the company states on its website. The expansion is expected to increase average annual production over the first 10 years of a 25-year mine life to 56 million pounds of copper, 10 million pounds of molybdenum and .6 million ounces of silver.
