More cash for Almaden

Almaden Minerals (AMM-T, AAU-X) now has more cash to put into its promising Elk gold project in B.C.

The Vancouver-based company announced that it has completed a private placement that will raise roughly $1.2 million for company coffers by issuing 1 million flow-through shares for $1.20 a piece.

One of the biggest players on the flow-through scene, MineralFields Group, is snapping up 833,331 of the shares while insiders of the company bought 85,000 shares.

The bulk of the new capital will go into exploration at Elk where a new camp is being built and a diamond drill program recently got underway.

Overall 8,000 meters of diamond drilling is planned with the aim of lifting resources out of inferred category, expanding the resource base and drill testing other targets on the property.

Almaden is also working on a preliminary economic assessment of the open pit potential of the current resources. It expects the study to be finished shortly.

Elk is wholly owned by Almaden and sits 45-km southeast of Merritt in southern British Columbia.

The project hosts several zones of gold bearing mesothermal quartz veins.

In 2009 Almaden released an updated resource estimate for the project after revising its geologic model of the deposit. That estimate outlined 920,000 tonnes grading 8.4 grams gold for 250,000 oz. of gold in the measured and indicated category and 780,000 tonnes grading 11 grams gold for 270,000 oz. of gold in the inferred.

Those resources included ore that would be mined via both underground and open pit methods.

In Toronto on July 5 Almaden shares were off 5% or 5¢ to 88¢ on 55,000 shares traded. The company’s shares have moved between $1.42 and 64¢ over the last 52-week period.