Bellavista Resources has traded as high as 30¢, up 50 per cent on its 20¢ issue price after raising $6.5 million in a heavily oversubscribed initial public offering.
The IPO was backed by Capricorn Metals executive chairman Mark Clark, chief executive Kim Massey, Bellevue Gold managing director Steve Parsons and former Alita Resources boss Mark Calderwood.
The company holds the Edmund project in the Upper Gascoyne, 130km south-west of Newman, with its exploration efforts set to target four areas spanning a 130km-long corridor.
Bellavista said the previously overlooked region is increasingly viewed as an emerging exploration hot-spot, with Canadian giant Teck recently securing a large landholding about 20km north of Bellavista’s tenements, while the new Abra base metals mine of ASX-listed Galena Mining is 30km to the south.
Bellavisa chairman Mel Ashton said the backing of Mr Clark and Mr Parsons was a ringing endorsement of the potential of the company and its highly prospective projects which it planned to drill immediately.
The explorer is planning an initial 17,000m drilling program in three of the areas that are prospective for zinc, nickel and copper. The fourth target is prospective for platinum-group elements and uranium.
The company says historic sampling and drilling in the area had intersected widespread evidence of mineralisation but modern exploration techniques had not been applied, mainly because of previously low base metals prices.
Former Helix Resources managing director Michael Wilson will lead the company as executive director while former Bellevue Gold exploration superintendent Natalia Brunacci has been appointed exploration manager.
