Atacama to raise $80M

VANCOUVER–Atacama Minerals (AAM-V, ATAAF-O), a major iodine producer in Chile, has announced an $80-million brokered private placement on a best-efforts basis to raise money for its move into fertilizers.

GMP and Cormack will lead the private placement of up to 80 million shares at $1 per share.

The announcement comes after two recent developments that expand Atacama’s Aguas Blancas operation from an iodine producer alone — churning out 7% of Chile’s iodine, a country that makes over half of the world’s iodine — to one Aguas Blancas, in the Atacama Salt Desert of northern Chile, to process nitrate from the iodine, nitrogen and sulphur-bearing Caliche deposit at the 265-sq.-km property.

The new processing plant will annually produce 70,000 tonnes of nitrate fertilizer from salt brine made at its iodine production facility. This is similar to what Chile’s top iodine producer Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (SQM-N) already does at its numerous mines in the Atacama Salt Desert.

A month and a half after news of its move into nitrates, with potash Brazil, 30 km west of the port of Salvador, where it hopes to find potash in a drilling program later this year. The property is located in the Reconcavo basin, where Atacama says development of oil, gas and halite salt deposits has revealed potash beds.

While no drilling has been completed on Atacama’s property, the company notes that in 1972, Mineracao e Quimica do Nordeste’s petrographic drilling encountered 9 metres of sylvite and sylvinite interbedded with halite salts at about 1,100 metres below surface on the island of Matarandiba in the Reconcavo basin.