It‘s official: Taurus provides American West Metals with AUD 18.8 million

The deal is now finally in the bag. As Australian copper explorer American West Metals (WKN A3DE4Y / ASX AW1) announced today, a formal agreement has been signed with TMRF Canada Inc. (a subsidiary of Taurus Mining Royalty Fund L.P.) under which Taurus will pay USD 12.5 million or AUD 18.8 million to American West and its partner Aston Bay. In return, Taurus will receive a royalty of 0.95% on American West’s Storm copper project in the Canadian province of Nunavut.

As announced today, the company will receive an initial payment of USD 1 million or around AUD 1.5 million under the agreement this week. The total first tranche amounts to USD 5 million or approximately AUD 7.5 million. American West will receive the remainder of this tranche after the registration of the license with the Nunavut Mining Recorder’s Office has been completed. This is expected in two to three weeks.

Under the terms of the agreement, the company will receive another tranche upon delivery of a pre-feasibility study on Storm and submission of permit applications for the development of the project. American West will then receive a further USD 3.5 million or approximately AUD 5.25 million.

A final instalment of USD 4 million or AUD 6 million will be paid to the company as soon as a resource of 400,000 tons of contained copper metal with an average grade of at least 1% copper in accordance with the Australian JORC standard can be demonstrated. Currently, i.e. before all the drilling in 2024 had been carried out, this figure is already at 205,000 tons.

The fresh capital will be split between American West Metals and Aston Bay Holdings in proportion to their respective shareholdings, i.e. 80% for American West and 20% for Aston Bay.

American West has already significantly expanded its exploration and development work on Storm in view of these funds. So far this year, more than 22,000 meters of drilling have been completed. This is double the largest drilling campaign on the project to date and the company therefore expects a significant expansion of the previously defined resource at Storm.

In addition, materials for next year’s field work have already been delivered on a large scale by ship charter. According to American West, this results in potential savings of USD 4 million in logistics costs for the 2025 program.

In parallel, environmental, mining and development studies have been completed, including detailed tests that show the potential for a DSO (Direct Shipping Ore) operation. According to American West, these studies will be used, among other things, to prepare a prefeasibility study for early next year.

Dave O’Neill, Managing Director of American West Metals, commented: “We are very pleased to have completed the formal documentation of the royalty financing, which provides us with access to significant non-dilutive financing for the Storm Copper Project.

The royalties have allowed us to expand operations at Storm this year, resulting in significant progress on the project, which is rapidly becoming a potentially globally significant copper mining operation.

Taurus’ investment is a recognition of the strong growth foundations American West has built to date and an endorsement of the American West team and the production potential at Storm.”

Michael Davies, Chief Investment Officer at Taurus, is impressed by what has been achieved at Storm to date – and by the project’s potential to become a major mining operation. In view of this, he stated, his company is delighted to be able to support the American West team in its efforts.