News

April 14, 2008

Anglesey Mining Sells Out Of Parys Mountain

By Alastair Ford

It’s the end of an era. Anglesey Mining is selling its Parys Mountain copper project in Wales. The deal ends an association with the property that goes back more than twenty years. The buyer is Western Metals, an Australian-listed company with uranium assets in Tanzania, a silver-lead-zinc property in Australia, uranium in the USA, a copper-molybdenum-gold property in Peru, and a copper-nickel target in Canada. How much of a focus Parys Mountain will therefore get remains open to question, but that’s no longer Anglesey’s concern. What’s of far more significance is, as Anglesey chief executive Bill Hooley says, that “these guys come in with a different sort of balance sheet”. A$29 million of cash to be precise, according to the most recent set of financials, interim results for the half year to 31st December 2007.

It’s just a co-incidence that the Parys Mountain price tag is also A$29 million (£13.75 million), because although it’s a very attractive headline figure, it will be some time before Anglesey sees the whole amount. Much of it will be paid in shares anyway. But what with all of Western’s other work commitments now running alongside its new plan to spend up to A$15 million on rehabilitating Parys Mountain’s Morris shaft and on other underground development and drilling work, it will probably need...