ASX-listed Spartan Resources on Thursday unveiled an A$80-million fully underwritten equity raising to accelerate exploration and development of the Dalgaranga gold project, in the Murchison district of Western Australia.

Dalgaranga produced about 70 000 oz of gold in the 2022 financial year, before being placed on care and maintenance in November 2022 to implement an operational reset designed to preserve the value of its extensive infrastructure and resource base while developing a new, sustainable operating plan.

This approach is underpinned by the exceptional high-grade Never Never gold discovery, which was made in 2022 just 1 km from the existing 2.5-million-tonne-a-year carbon-in-leach processing facility and the main openpit at Dalgaranga.

The equity raising follows the company’s continued exploration success at Never Never and the very recent success with the discovery of the high-grade Pepper prospect, including an intersection of 17.5 m at 15.9 g/t.

Proceeds from the equity raising will be used to underpin a significantly expanded exploration campaign at Dalgaranga in 2024/25.

“This is a landmark capital raising for Spartan which puts the company in an exceptional position to deliver on the huge potential of the Never Never discovery and our other recent exploration successes at Dalgaranga,” said Spartan MD and CEO Simon Lawson.

“The proceeds will allow us to establish an underground exploration decline that will take underground development to within 50 m to 100 m of the Never Never orebody. This will allow us to cost-effectively drill-out Never Never, the new Pepper discovery and Four Pillars to a very high level of definition, while also testing other ‘look-alike’ targets in the vicinity.

“Importantly, the underground exploration decline is also likely to provide for an accelerated pathway to re-commence mining at the time of a final investment decision to restart production,” said Lawson.

He noted that the Spartan team was committed to ensuring a thorough and diligent approach was taken to the delineation of the high-grade orebodies at Dalgaranga.

“The proceeds of this capital raise will ensure we have the balance sheet strength to progress our robust and thorough restart plan, and the financial flexibility to commence early works in advance of the restart decision.”