Lundin makes another move to buy Nevsun – by Mariaan Webb (MiningWeekly.com – July 17, 2018)

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Keen to bring the Timok copper project, in Serbia, into its fold, Canadian firm Lundin Mining has announced that it will take a C$1.4-billion offer directly to Nevsun Resources shareholders, after unsuccessful attempts to engage with the company over the past five months.

Lundin, which earlier this year tried to buy Nevsun in a deal with Canadian junior Euro Sun, is now going at it alone, with a C$4.75 a share cash consideration, which it points out is a 82% premium to the target company’s closing price of C$2.61 a share when it first expressed interest in acquiring Timok.

The offer is also a premium to Nevsun’s closing price of C$4.21 a share on Monday. The prize for Lundin will be the Timok project, which has a probable reserve of 27-million tonnes at an average grade of 3.3% copper and 2.1 g/t gold, containing 0.89-million tonnes of copper and 1.8-million ounces of gold.

A prefeasibility study for the project’s Upper Zone estimates that Timok will produce 1.7-billion pounds of payable copper over ten years.

Nevsun also owns the high-grade Bisha copper/zinc mine in Eritrea, and although Lundin’s directors, reportedly, previously had reservations about investing in the African nation, president and CEO Paul Conibear said on Monday that significant changes had been observed in the political landscape of that country.

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