{"id":1113471,"date":"2019-04-30T10:51:01","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T10:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mining.com\/?p=984888"},"modified":"2019-04-30T10:51:01","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T10:51:01","slug":"sirius-minerals-gets-jpmorgan-backing-for-britains-biggest-fertilizer-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/?p=1113471","title":{"rendered":"Sirius Minerals gets JPMorgan backing for Britain\u2019s biggest fertilizer mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sirius Minerals (LON:SXX), the British company building a huge fertilizer mine beneath a national park, has signed up Wall Street giant JPMorgan<\/a> to provide financing in the form of bonds and credit\u00a0up to about $3.8 billion.<\/p>\n

The bank is underwriting a $400 million share placing, launched on Tuesday<\/a>, at a price between 15p to 18p a share. It\u2019s also using its balance sheet to provide a $2.5 billion revolving credit, or overdraft facility, which JPMorgan plans to syndicate to other lenders.<\/p>\n

The backing, Sirius Minerals said, would be enough to build its Woodsmith polyhalite mine in North Yorkshire and have it in operations by 2021.<\/p>\n

Wall Street giant JPMorgan will provide financing in the form of bonds and credit\u00a0up to about $3.8B.<\/q><\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s announcement provides a clear pathway to a fully financed project in the months ahead, while enabling us to progress construction at full speed,\u201d chief executive Chris Fraser said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Besides the share placing, Sirius is also hoping to raise $400 million from the sale of convertible bonds, also underwritten, as well as $500 million of senior debt.<\/p>\n

Woodsmith, poised to be one of the world\u2019s largest in terms of the amount of resources\u00a0extracted, will generate an initial 10 million tonnes per year of polyhalite, a form of potash that is used in plant fertilizers. That figure is expected to double once running at full tilt, by 2024.<\/p>\n

The operation involves sinking two 1.5km shafts below a national park on the North York Moors and is expected to create about 1,800 jobs during construction, as well as 1,000 permanent positions once it opens.<\/p>\n

The ore will be extracted via the two mine shafts and transported to Teesside on the world\u2019s longest underground conveyor belt via a 37km-underground tunnel. It will then be granulated at a materials handling facility, with the majority being exported to overseas markets.<\/p>\n

Higher funding costs<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Sirius had originally said it would raise $1.5B of commercial debt and $1.5B of loans backed by the UK government<\/a>.\u00a0 That plan was revised in March<\/a>, when it said it had received a conditional proposal from an unnamed financial institution for the $3B senior debt it needed to move forward with the project, in the works since 2016.<\/p>\n

Shares in the company fell as much as 19% to 17.72p on the news \u2014 their lowest in more than a year. The drop, likely a market reaction to the higher funding costs and dilution from the share placing, shrunk Sirius\u2019 market capitalization to about $854m from $1B a week ago.<\/p>\n

The post Sirius Minerals gets JPMorgan backing for Britain\u2019s biggest fertilizer mine<\/a> appeared first on MINING.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The company’s stock fell to its lowest in more than a year — likely a market reaction to the higher funding costs and dilution from the share placing.<\/p>\n

The post Sirius Minerals gets JPMorgan backing for Britain’s biggest fertilizer mine<\/a> appeared first on MINING.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1944,424,404,369,698,1945,438,1098],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113471"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1113471"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1113556,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113471\/revisions\/1113556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1113471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1113471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1113471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}