Junior potash and nitrogen company Karnalyte Resources Inc., Saskatoon, reported on Dec. 24 the closing of a rights offering that saw the sale of some 14,058,282 common shares for a total of C$2.3 million at $0.17 per share. It marks the additional investment by India’s Gujarat State Fertilizer and Chemicals Ltd. (GSFC) in Karnalyte.
GSFC acquired a total of 10,288,697 common shares in the offering and now holds 16,334,558 common shares, representing approximately 38.8 percent of the issued and outstanding common shares of the company. The total number of issued and outstanding common shares of the company upon completion of the rights offering is 42,174,847 common shares.
“I would like to thank all shareholders that participated in the rights offering and for their vote of confidence in our strategic plan to diversify our business into two fertilizer product lines – potash and nitrogen,” said Frank Wheatley, Karnalyte president. “We look forward to 2019 and proceeding with the development of Proteos Nitrogen and, if potash prices continue to improve, the development of Wynyard Potash.”
Karnalyte owns the construction-ready Wynyard Potash Project, with planned phase 1 production of 625,000 mt/y of granular potash, and two subsequent phases of 750,000 mt/y each, taking total production up to 2.125 million mt/y. It is also exploring the development of the Proteos Nitrogen Project, which is a proposed small-scale nitrogen fertilizer plant with a nameplate production capacity of approximately 700 mt/d of ammonia and approximately 1,200 mt/d of urea, and a target customer market of independent fertilizer wholesalers in Central Saskatchewan, with the U.S. Midwest seen as a secondary market.