Namib Minerals said its subsidiary Bulawayo Mining Company has signed a nonbinding term sheet with Ecobank Zimbabwe for a proposed 30 million dollar, 36 month loan facility to support the resource definition and bankability programme at the Redwing gold mine in Zimbabwe. The facility remains subject to customary conditions precedent and to definitive documentation being executed, and the company is explicit that the term sheet is indicative.
Together with funding already secured for the programme, including a 6.5 million dollar non dilutive term loan from the African Banking Corporation of Zimbabwe, the facility is expected on its proposed terms to complete the funding required for Step 3 of Namib’s development milestones. That step covers resource definition and establishing the bankability of Redwing, and its outcome will set the proposed development’s scale, capital requirements and construction plan.
Under the term sheet the money would finance hoist related expenditure, expansion and maintenance of the milling plant, drilling equipment, mine development and further exploration drilling to grow the resource base. Local reporting of the same release adds that the term sheet envisages Ecobank and the Ecobank Group acting as lead arranger and underwriter for construction financing after a definitive feasibility study, on terms not yet set.
Jurisdiction watch: Redwing is a restart and expansion case in Zimbabwe financed, at this stage, by domestic and regional banks rather than international project finance. That structure avoids dilutive equity but leaves the definitive documentation, and the feasibility result, as the two gates between an indicative term sheet and a funded build.