First day of trading for Papua Mining

Papua Mining, a company focussed on the exploration of gold and copper deposits in Papua New Guinea, began trading shares on AIM on Friday.

On February 20th the company announced that it had placed 15,938,167 new ordinary shares with institutional and retail investors at 44p per share, raising around £7.0m before expenses and was seeking admission to AIM.

It is the first AIM initial public offering (IPO) of a mining/exploration company so far this year.

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Papua Mining holds two exploration licences in the West New Britain province on the Papua New Guinea island of New Britain and one exploration licence in Ambunti which is located in the East Sepik province on the mainland.

The company has also applied for a further 11 licences which, if successful, would result in a total area of 4,394 sq km being available to the company for exploration.

Hugh McCullough, Chief Executive Officer, said: "We have assembled a very senior and experienced team to carry out exploration programmes in one of the most prospective gold and copper territories in the world. Although Papua New Guinea is the location of a number of significant gold and copper mines, there remain parts of the country which are underexplored, including the areas covered by the licences we hold and have applied for.

"We are very pleased with the level and quality of investor support we have received and to have joined AIM. We also look forward to continuing the exploration work programme which is aimed at delineating drill target areas to allow us to commence drilling later this year."

NR