Vast opportunities for Vast Resources
With a new Institutional Investor on board, an historic issue about to be resolved, a ramp up in production and the company looking to be debt free, is it time to look at Vast Resources?
April is and hopefully May and June 2023 will be company making months for Vast Resources, the UK-listed enterprise with mines and projects in Romania, Tajikistan and Zimbabwe.
This month the company gained another sizable institutional investor which joined Vast’s shareholder register via acquisition on the secondary market.
Regardless of how the holding was accumulated, Vast’s chief executive Andrew Prelea is happy and if more institutions join he’ll be even happier. “At least it shows that people are understanding what we have achieved in three jurisdictions.”
The three jurisdictions Prelea is talking about are some that have defeated other companies that have attempted to operate there. “One of which is Romania, where we are the only (non-state) mining company operational. Many have tried and failed. We’ve managed to do that through several changes in government.”
“We’re in Zimbabwe working closely with government to resolve the historic issue, which is also not an easy jurisdiction and we are in Tajikistan and we’re proud to be the first mining company to work with government in a joint venture to restart a mine successfully.”
The historic issue Prelea references is a long and complicated story about who owns a legacy parcel of 129,400 carats of rough diamonds.
Vast does and Prelea says he’s confident the repatriation process will come to a head towards the end of this month or early May. “We’re just on standby to go and collect.”
The intention, Prelea adds, is to clean them, polish correctly, “and then put them up for a tender process and realize the maximum value for shareholders.”
Once monetised the company could be debt free.
Irrespective of rough diamond monetisation the production ramp up at Romania continues and all being well the Baita Plai Polymetallic Mine could achieve breakeven by June “and very possibly even profitable at the mine covering the cost of the group.”
Watch Andrew talk to Sarah Lowther about having institutional backers on the shareholder register and that the success of the company isn’t dependent on repatriation of legacy diamonds.
Read the technical program for the Baita Plai Mine’s resource upgrade exploitation licence
Watch Andrew and Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Hall answer investor questions on the InvestorMeet platform.
Access the transcription of Vast’s Q&A session on the Investor Meet platform
To view the latest Vast Resources Company presentation click here.
Follow the company on Twitter @vast_resources
