Avalon Ventures Ltd. TSXV:AVL (the “Company”) is pleased to announce that further to the Company’s news release of December 16, 2003, the non-brokered private placement of flow-through units at a price of $0.25 per unit closed effective today with the issuance of the flow-through units to the subscribers. The Company elected not to proceed with the brokered private placement of 2,000,000 flow-through units also announced on December 16, but arranged an increase in the non-brokered private placement from the previously announced 500,000 units to 1,060,000 units, for
total flow-through proceeds of $265,000.
Further, the Company announces that it has arranged an increase in the non-brokered private placement offering of non-flow-through units priced at $0.20 per unit, from the previously announced 2,500,000 units to up to 3,200,000 units. This transaction is expected to close within the next 10 days and would result in additional non flow-through proceeds of up to $640,000.
Each flow-through unit consists of one flow-through common share and one non-transferable share purchase warrant. Each warrant entitles the holder to purchase one non-flow-through common share at a price of $0.27 until January 9, 2005 and at a price of $0.29 until January 9, 2006. The shares contained in the units and any shares issuable upon exercise of the warrants are subject to a four-month hold period expiring on May 9, 2004. Each non-flow-through unit will consist of one common share and one two-year warrant to purchase one additional common share at a price of $0.25 in the first year and $0.30 in the second year after issuance.
The proceeds from the flow-through private placement will be used to fund exploration work on the Company’s Mount Thom, Upper Kemptown and West River Station “IOCG type” copper-gold projects in Nova Scotia. This work will consist of prospecting, geochemical and geophysical surveys on all three properties as well as diamond drilling on the copper-gold target already defined on the Mount Thom property. Grid preparation for ground magnetometer surveys is set to begin on the Mount Thom property next week. This data will be used to finalize hole locations for a drilling program scheduled to begin within the next two months.
Sale of Interests in Inactive Properties
The Company also announces that it has recently sold its interests in three low-priority, inactive projects: the Denain Copper-Gold project, Val d’Or, Quebec, the Alcudia gold project, Urban Twp, Quebec and the Wolf Mountain platinum-palladium project, Thunder Bay, Ontario. The Company sold its 50% interest in the Denain project to Mirabel Resources Inc (“RMB“:TSXV) for 120,000 RMB shares valued at $0.25 per share and sold its 25% interest in the Alcudia Gold project to Alto Ventures Ltd. for $5,000 cash.
Finally, the Company sold its 40% interest in the Wolf Mountain platinum-palladium property to East West Resource Corporation and Canadian Golden Dragon Resources Ltd. for $20,000 cash and a retained 0.4% NSR interest, which the purchasers also have the right to buy for an additional $1.0 million cash.
Avalon Ventures Ltd. is a Canadian junior mineral exploration and development company with a primary focus on development of industrial minerals and rare metals deposits and a secondary focus on exploration for IOCG type copper-gold deposits. To find out more about Avalon Ventures Ltd. please visit our website www.avalonventures.com.
This news release is available on the Company’s official on-line investor relations site for investor commentary, feedback and questions. Investors are invited to visit http://www.agoracom.com and view the “Avalon Ventures” Investor Discussion and Contact Forum. In addition, investors are invited to e-mail their questions and correspondence to AVL@agoracom.com.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
“D. S. Bubar”
Donald S. Bubar,
President & CEO
*The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release*
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