Aspire Mining director increases stake

Aspire Mining director Neil Lithgow has increased his stake in the company to 63,478,501 shares after acquiring an additional 258,501 shares on market.

Lithgow paid A$33,174.03 for the shares, providing an average entry price of A$0.128 per share.

Aspire is focused on developing its Ovoot Coking Coal Project in Mongolia and had recently announced that an independent review of the Rail Pre-Feasibility Study had found that an alternative direct rail alignment connecting Ovoot to Erdenet and bypassing Moron could result in capital expenditure savings of about US$188 million.

This reduction is due to the easier terrain and reduction in the distance coking coal from the project would need to travel by about 47 kilometres.

The review also identified the potential to significantly reduce operating costs over the life of the project that will be explored in a second version of the Rail Study.

Aspire is planning to start Stage 1 production at the project in early 2016 at an initial rate of 6 million tonnes per annum of high quality coking coal, ramping up to 12 million tonnes per annum in 2018 under Stage 2.

This will deliver a project with an internal rate of return of 43%, according to the recently completed Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS), which was based on Probable Coal Reserves of 178 million tonnes – the third largest coking coal deposit in Mongolia, by reserves.

Significantly and as a pointer to the future, Aspire to date has only explored 20% of the Ovoot Basin.