American West Metals raises $10m for expanded Storm-chasing...

American West Metals raises $10m for expanded Storm-chasing adventure in Canada
American West Metals has received commitments for $10 million to expand an exploration program at its Storm copper-silver project at Somerset Island in Nunavut, Canada, on the back of releasing an impressive maiden resource last month.
The Storm project covers a whopping 4,000km2 within the Tier-1 Polaris minerals district where there’s strong government support for critical minerals projects, including copper.
The recent maiden resource covers the Storm project area across four prospects and totals 17.5Mt @ 1.2% copper and 3.4g/t silver (0.35% copper cut-off) for 205,000t of contained copper and 1.9Moz silver.
American West Metals (ASX:AW1) says the Storm MRE covers under 5% of the total project area and the $10m of additional cash will fund a significant exploration program to investigate across its tenure to prove up more shallow, high-grade copper-silver mineralisation.
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The Storm project areas. Pic: Supplied (AW1)

Cash for expansion and further exploration

To expand its exploration programs, AW1 has raised $10 million, including $6.997 million through Canada’s flow-through shares (FTS) mechanism at 14.7c per share, a 22.5% premium to the company’s last closing price of 12c per share.
The remaining $3.024 million was raised via a concurrent institutional placement of shares at 10.5c, a 40% premium to the company’s aforementioned closing price.
As part of Canada’s FTS regime, tax incentives are provided to eligible investors in the FTS placement for expenditures of AW1 and qualify as “flow-through” critical mineral mining expenditures under the nation’s Income Tax Act.
An expanded exploration program is scheduled to begin at Storm next month, with a focus on resource growth and the testing of large-scale copper targets.
Apart from at Storm, funds will be used to complete studies and kick off follow-up exploration activities at the West Desert and Copper Warrior projects in Utah.

More major milestones coming in 2024

AW1 Managing Director Dave O’Neill says the company is extremely pleased to execute the capital raising, which includes shares issued at a substantial premium to the company’s last closing price.
“The raise was heavily oversubscribed by investors in Australia and globally – in recognition of the high quality of the Storm project and the tremendous valuation upside it offers,” O’Neill says.
“The proceeds from the capital raising further strengthen the company’s balance sheet and allow us to expand the work program at Storm, which will commence during March.
“Major milestones are planned for 2024 including an upgrade of the Storm resource and the completion of metallurgical processing and economic studies – which we believe will add significant value to American West.”