American West inks offtake deal – but former hype long forgotten

Former copper explorer darling American West (ASX:AW1) released news of a copper-silver offtake deal on Thursday, but it didn’t move the needle in early trades, suggesting the speccy’s glory days may be over.

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For a good while, AW1 was one of the most popular stocks on HotCopper and abroad, with visible copper hits repeatedly creating liquidity and volatility.

But, even with silver near 14-year highs and the copper megatrend still ongoing, AW1’s Thursday offtake hasn’t been enough to recapture the interest of those who may remember fondly the stock.

As at 10.40am AEST, only $30,000 worth of shares had traded hands.

(For reference, the company has diluted itself to the point where it’s got over 800M shares on issue, which surely didn’t help.)

Thursday’s news details yet another step forward to actually getting its copper project in Canada off the ground, including a $2.2M placement that’s given metals trading and financing outfit Ocean Partner Holdings a 9.4% stake in AW1.

OPH, in return, gets 100% of copper produced at the company’s once-fabled Storm Copper Project, with “OPH [to] provide debt finance for up to 80% of initial capital for the development of the Project” with a loan.

“Ocean Partners’ existing experience with ore-sorting and DSO copper products is a natural fit with Storm, and the partnership has already begun to impact and streamline the technical aspects of the processing work flow for the ongoing PFS activities,” company chief Dave O’Neill said.

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“The exploration and development activities at Storm are continuing, and we look forward to updating investors with regular news flow.”

AW1 last traded at 3.8cps.

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