Denham provides $130m for start-up Australia mining platform

Denham has enlisted Steve Murdoch, former CEO of Karara Mining, to run the new business, which will take on stalled mining projects from around the country. The GP hopes to exploit the drop in construction costs following a slump in the resources sector.

"There are some real quality projects out there which for a range of reasons, particularly with the negative sentiment in the market, have found it extremely difficult to get traditional sources of funding and have sat there and not been developed," Murdoch told The Australian.

Murdoch is joined at Auctus by two former colleagues at Karara, including Paul Sims, previously the company's CFO. Auctus has already looked at about 1,000 projects and has narrowed them down to a handful of potential targets, mostly involving base metals.

The deal runs along similar lines to Denham's $200 million investment Pembroke Resources in May. The newly created firm, led by the former C-suite of Gloucester Coal, is targeting small but potentially highly profitable coking coal projects that are undeveloped, under construction or producing.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Early-stage
• Australia
• resources
• Venture
• Denham Capital