Marcventures Mining boosts capital to P1B

MANILA, Philippines - The mining unit of publicly-listed Marcventures Holdings will boost its capitalization to P1 billion as it prepares for an expansion program.

In a disclosure, the company said its board of directors approved the plan of Marcventures Mining and Development Corp. (MMDC) to increase its authorized capital stock to P1 billion from P20 million.

The board also allowed Marcventures to subscribe to P200 million worth of MMDC shares.

“The funds are to be used for working capital and capital expenditures for volume expansion and upgrading of facilities,” MMDC said.

In the first half, MMDC completed 14 shipments with a volume of 787,961 wet metric tons (WMT) of nickel ore, triple than that of the 259,593 WMT a year ago.

It allowed MMDC to post P695.6 million in revenues, up from P315.1 million in the same period last year. Net income surged 172 percent to P304.2 million in the first half from P112 million last year.

MMDC has a mineral production sharing agreement to mine 4,799 hectares in Surigao del Sur for nickel and gold. Only 2.5 percent of the total has been explored.

MMDC is building up capacity within its 120-hectare mine site from the current one million WMT to 1.5 million WMT per year.

Early this year, Marcventures announced that MMDC completed the first phase of its major exploration program in its mining property in Northeastern Mindanao.

Measured, indicated and inferred nickel mineral resources of the nickel mine in Cantilan, Surigao del Sur totaled 45.324 million WMT. The mineral ores contain a total of 344.739 MT of nickel.