West Australian company Greenfields Exploration Ltd. aims to raise up to A$5 million through a crowdsourced equity sale to fund frontier exploration in Greenland ahead of an ASX listing in what could be the first of its kind in Australia for mining.
In December 2017, Greenfields secured 12,975 square kilometers in eastern Greenland, an area 20 times larger than the median project listing for exploration companies on the ASX in the past year, and which the Danish and Greenlandic governments have identified as highly prospective for copper, cobalt and nickel.
Greenfields managing director Jon Bell said that while there has been some "very nice" historical work, a lot of it was in the early 1980s and there is no precompetitive data on it, so the initial A$5 million will be used to undertake an airborne geophysical survey, among other things, and "pick the low-hanging fruit".
It is not the first time a miner has used crowdsourcing. Canada's Integra Gold Corp. used it in a C$1 million "gold rush challenge" in 2015 that it hoped would lead it to the next big gold discovery at its Sigma-Lamaque gold property in Val-d'Or, Quebec.
However, laws were only just enacted in Australia's federal parliament in September 2017 to allow startups to raise up to A$5 million from crowdsourced funding in any one year.
Lindsay Dick, Greenfields director and general counsel of blockchain energy start-up Power Ledger, told S&P Global Market Intelligence that Greenfields could be the first Australian mining company to raise money under equity crowdsourced funding, "though this will only be correct once we open the [crowdsourcing] offer in earnest".
"We've seen millions of dollars come flooding in to crowdsourced equity funding in just a few months, so it's clear there's a real appetite for exciting, alternative investments," he said.
Bell told S&P Global Market Intelligence that once initial field work is completed by September, the company will conduct a crowdsourcing competition for the data to provide a range of interpretations, and develop work programs which will be added into the information for the IPO, which will likely be on the ASX in early 2019.
"Crowd competitions and collaboration will fit well with the younger, more adaptive generation, to align our views with investors, so we see a niche market we can tap into before we go to the ASX," Bell said.
However there are skeptics.
Melbourne-based Adrian Prendergast, senior resources analyst at stockbroker Morgans, told S&P Global Market Intelligence that generally speaking, crowdsourcing was "not well suited" for the resources sector, considering the "specialized knowledge you need to follow that space".
Yet Bell said the risk in Greenland is minimal, with a small bureaucracy, simple tax regulations which are in English and easy access to historical reports.
Historical rock chips have showed evidence of up to 15% copper, and one of the basins is a direct extension of the Zechstein Basin where some sizable copper deposits are being mined.
To ensure the opportunity was not "too good to be true", Bell enlisted John Hronsky, who he calls "the Stephen Hawking of geology", to do a "sanity check" as a first pass validation on the exploration ground.
With that hurdle cleared, Greenfields is now embarking on the capital raise to undertake the exploration in its first-mover approach to generate many targets in addition to those identified up to 50 years ago.
Then, Greenfields aims to split up the licences and partner with majors who will ideally pay to take the projects forward to production, or spin them out as separate entities, while potentially paying Greenfields a cut of the profits. Bell said this model would ensure Greenfields maintains exposure to the upside, while "keeping a lid" on shareholder dilution.
Due to Greenland’s northern latitude and challenging conditions, Greenfields can only complete its exploration from June to September. Chairman Mathew Longworth, former managing director at Heron Resources Ltd., said the location also has upsides.
"It's relatively easy to load your copper straight onto a ship in Greenland and send it off to Europe and Asia, compared to your typical greenfield site," he said. According to Greenlandic government sources, the Greenfields licences are adjacent to those held by Perth-based Ironbark Zinc Ltd., among others.