Thompson Creek Metals has arranged an equipment financing deal with Cat Financial Services Ltd., under which Cat Financial will underwrite up to $132 million in mobile fleet equipment financing for Thompson Creek’s Mt. Milligan copper-gold mine in British Columbia.
The fleet will include 42 Caterpillar 793F haul trucks along with shovels, drills, loaders, dozers and support equipment and is expected to be delivered to the mine throughout 2012. Drawdowns against the equipment finance facility will occur as the equipment is delivered. Each drawdown will be for a term of five years and will be secured by the underlying equipment.
“As previously announced, we believe cash on hand, cash flow from operations, funds from financing facilities and expected funds from the exercise of warrants will be sufficient to fund the construction and development of the Mt. Milligan copper-gold mine. We look forward to the completion of the mine in late 2013,” said Kevin Loughrey, chairman and CEO of Thompson Creek.
Thompson Creek also announced it has selected Finning Canada and Bucyrus Canada as mining equipment suppliers for the Mt. Milligan project, pursuant to which Finning and Bucyrus will supply mobile mining equipment, parts and equipment maintenance services to the mine.
The Mt. Milligan project is based on a conventional truck-shovel open-pit mine and a 60,000-mt/d copper flotation concentrator to be built over a 30-month period at a capital cost of approximately C$915 million. Commercial production is scheduled to commence in 2013. Average annual metal production over a 22-year mine life is forecast to be 81 million lb copper and 194,500 oz gold. The mine plan, according to Thompson Creek, has been designed for extraction of higher grade and gold-rich reserves in the early years. In the first six years of the mine plan gold production will average 262,100 oz/y and account for 55% of revenues.
