British miner sells BNC, Toledo stake

MANILA, Philippines - British miner European Nickel Plc (ENK) is selling its interests in Toledo Mining Corp. (TMC) and Berong Nickel Corp. (BNC) to Singapore-based World Fund Pte Ltd. to raise funds to support working capital requirements.

ENK said in a statement that it is selling its 5.01 percent stake in TMC and 18.7 percent interest in BNC for $698,000 and $6.55 million, respectively to World Fund.

“The total proceeds from the sale of $7.25 million will further strengthen the company’s working capital position,” ENK said.

Both assets were seen to be non-core by ENK’s directors.

The sale of the stake in BNC will only proceed though if BNC’s other stakeholders, TMC and Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp., do not exercise their pre-emption rights.

Should TMC and Atlas decide to exercise their pre-emption rights, they will have to match the price offered by World Fund for the acquisition.

The two companies have 60 days to exercise their pre-emption rights.

TMC has interests in the Berong nickel mine, Ipilan as well as the Ulugan nickel project in Palawan.

BNC holds the mining tenement for the Berong mine.

The Berong mine’s resource is estimated at 9.92 million tones of laterite ore at a 1.55 percent nickel grade, as of June 2007.

ENK’s projects in the Philippines are the Acoje deposit and the Zambales chromite deposit which are both in the province of Zambales.

ENK, which was founded in 2003 , initially pursued the development of Caldag, a nickel asset in Turkey.