Join our daily newsletter At The Bell to receive exclusive market insights
- Altech Chemicals (ATC) has completed its $1.8 million share placement
- The HPA producer is initiating a share purchase plan for existing shareholders to apply for up to $30,000 of new Altech shares
- Based on the positive response from the SPP last year, Altech expects up to an additional $4 million could be raised
- Funding will accelerate Stage 2 engineering and construction activities at Altech’s HPA plant in Malaysia
- Despite the news, Altech is down 13.9 per cent today with shares trading for 9.9 cents each
Altech Chemicals (ATC) has completed its $1.8 million share placement which will mainly fund its high purity alumina (HPA) plant in Johor, Malaysia.
In addition, the HPA producer is initiating a share purchase plan (SPP) for existing shareholders to apply for up to $30,000 of new Altech shares at the same price as the placement participants.
The placement and SPP shares will be issued at 9.75 cents per share which represents a 15 per cent discount to the price of the company’s shares as trading at market close on December 2, 2019, and the 5-day volume-weighted average price.
The placement shares will be issued in a single tranche under Altech’s current share placement capacity and approximately 18,624,628 shares will be issued.
Based on the positive response from the SPP in August 2018, the company expects up to an additional $4 million could be raised.
Altech is developing a 4500 tonnes per annum HPA processing plant in Johor, Malaysia. Feedstock for the plant will be sourced from the company’s kaolin deposit at Meckering in Western Australia.
Funding from the placement will accelerate Stage 2 engineering and construction activities which began in late August 2019.
HPA is a high-value product as it’s critical in making synthetic sapphire. Synthetic sapphire is used to make LED lights, semiconductor wafers and scratch-resistant sapphire glass used in electronics.
Increasingly, HPA is used as the coating on lithium-ion batteries’ separators. This improves performance, longevity and safety of the battery.
It is forecasted that by 2028, the HPA market demand will be approximately 272,000 tonnes, driven by the increasing adoption of LEDs worldwide and the demand from lithium-ion battery manufacturers to serve the surging electric vehicle market.
- Despite the news, Altech is down 13.9 per cent today with shares trading for 9.9 cents each at 12:55 pm AEDT.
