Russia-focused junior miner Eurasia Mining plc (LON:EUA) unveiled a massive deal with Chinese major Sinosteel to develop its Monchetundra platinum project. The contract is for the development of two platinum deposits and a beneficiation plant.

Managing director Christian Schaffalitzky tells Proactive: “Those people who follow the mining business will know we've been having a really rough time since the crash of metal prices in 2008. Normally we would do one of two things - we would raise funds to do our development work with equity capital, however the mining funds are no longer present or are much more diminished. The second way would be in joint venture with a major mining company but unfortunately they got too over-leveraged and so have been very inactive in the sector. So those of us who take risks to develop new deposits have been left on our own.”

“This new contract is basically a loan package and EPC contract, so a turnkey operation to develop the mine and plant to extract platinum group metals, precious metals and base metals from the deposits we've been exploring.

“It's basically a one-step turnkey contract with financing already conceptually in place for when we get the go-ahead from the Russian government to develop the mine,” Schaffalitzky added.

Sinosteel will construct and commission the mine with the contract in total worth US$176mln.