A Canadian mining multinational buys 50% of Aguablanca to exploit it

Posted On: January 12, 2024

The company Río Narcea Resources, with capital from Extremadura and concessionaire of the Aguablanca mine, in Monesterio, is joining forces with a mining multinational to exploit it. The agreement, announced yesterday on the stock exchange, means that the Canadian company Denarius Metal Corporation is buying 50% of Río Narcea Resources (RNR) to exploit the only nickel mine that Spain has and one of the few in Europe. Nickel is now – and has been for over a year – a very popular mineral. Aguablanca also has copper, although the proportion is approximately 80% nickel and 20% copper.

The Canadian Denarius Metal pays 25 million euros to RNR which, as TODAY announced, acquired this deposit in March 2021 from Valoriza Minería, of the Sacyr group. In the Rio Narcea company are the businessmen Alejandro Ayala, Iñigo Resusta and Juan Antonio Ortiz. Mario Celdrán started but he has no more actions. Three well-known investors in the region because they are linked to the lithium battery factory project to be carried out in Badajoz, the Cáceres cathode factory and the Cañaveral mine, also in the province of Cáceres. Additionally, Ayala, originally from Extremadura, is president of promoter Civitas Pacensis.

As Denarius Metals explains, the operation will be carried out through Alto Minerals, its subsidiary in Spain and owner of the Lomero-Poyatos deposit. It is in the province of Huelva, between the municipalities of El Cerro de Andévalo and Cortegana, about 88 kilometers from Monesterio. It contains silver, gold, copper, lead and zinc.

Its extraction, according to the Canadian company's plans, will be undertaken in the coming months but its processing would be carried out at the Aguablanca processing plant, in Monesterio. In this way, interest in the activation of the Aguablanca deposit is reinforced.

The mining company informs that Alto Minerals will be the operator of the Aguablanca reopening project and that RNR shareholders will provide a line of credit to finance the resumption and start of operations. Alto paid 2.5 million when signing the agreement and the rest will be paid in installments of 5 million euros on March 31 and 5.8 million at the end of June, September and December 2024. 50% of the Río company Narcea Resources in Canadian hands will not prevent Alejandro Ayala from continuing to be president of this company.

Ayala believes that Denarius Metals is the “ideal industrial partner to guarantee the operation of the Aguablanca mine on schedule”.

Aguablanca began operations in 2005. In 2007, RNR was acquired by Lundin Mining Corporation. Lundin continued to operate until 2015 through an open pit extraction and processing plant. During its 11-year operating life, the total volume of ore mined at Aguablanca was approximately 14 million tonnes of nickel (NI) and copper (CU). At full operational capacity, the mine processed approximately 1.85 million tonnes of ore per year with an average of approximately 8,000 tonnes of Ni and 7,000 tonnes of Cu produced in concentrate form.