Whilst Ariana Resources (LON:AAU) stand on the cusp of sealing their milestone Joint Venture agreement with construction and engineering conglomerate Proccea International Construction, investor attention is now starting to ponder on how the market will view (and value!) the transformed Company going forward. In a buoyant Gold market, fundamental wisdom tells us that a Gold Company's share price should experience its greatest gains once it has paved its route to gold production (this is largely due to de-risking factors and increasing confidence in a project's potential for commercial success) and Ariana now stands at a seminal point on that journey. Given the current level of investor anticipation, we invited Ariana's Managing Director Dr Kerim Sener to participate in an investor focussed question and answer session with Mining Maven and we are delighted he has agreed to take part.
We trust this will be of interest to our readers. If you have any comments or feedback please feel free to contact us
MM: We noted from last months announcement that Ariana has successfully completed a placement to raise £1m. Are you able to tell us more about the nature of this fundraising?
KS:We have previously made it clear that Ariana is pursuing a dual strategy, focused firstly on fast-tracking the Red Rabbit project into production and, secondly on new grassroots exploration in Turkey. We are continually evaluating new opportunities and in this process one in particular stood out. This was to acquire a series of advanced exploration opportunities across the country and included its related exploration data. In order for us to pursue this particular opportunity we entered a closed bid auction process and the timing and magnitude of our fundraising was designed partly to support that acquisition. However, the fundraising was not specifically focused on that opportunity alone and part of the fundraising was for additional working capital to advance exploration, current Red Rabbit development and to enable us to be financially poised to take advantage of other opportunities which we are assessing.
MM:In light of this how will this funding be utilised and do you now expect to be financed through to production from Red Rabbit? Can you also elaborate on what funding options are available to Ariana currently and also going forward?
KS:It is our intention to bring Red Rabbit into production in 2012. At this point the…
