A silica mining company which believes it can produce hundreds of millions of tons of the valuable industrial commodity is targeting a public listing in London.
Sky News has learnt that Extrac Technologies, which owns a site covering thousands of acres in Wyoming in the US, is kicking off talks with investors about a £7m pre-float fundraising.
Sources said that Chrystal Capital Partners was working on the raise.
An initial public offering has been pencilled in for 2024.
Extrac’s management team plans to mine its silica quarry for a broad spectrum of industrial production, with high-purity frac sand used in industries such as oil and gas, and glass and aluminium production.
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The purification of silicon to create metal parts for electric vehicles, batteries and semiconductor industries is seen as an increasingly strategic natural resource, with the US having been reliant to date on Chinese and Russian imports.
The Extrac quarry is being promoted to prospective investors as possessing significant cost advantages because of its location.
The first sales from the site are anticipated as soon as next month.
Extrac is expected to be operational cashflow-positive by October, with earnings next year forecast by the company to be more than £20m.
The pre-IPO funding is being raised at a pre-money valuation of £40m, according to insiders.
Lance Baller, Extrac Technologies’ chief executive, said: “Since discovering this extremely rare, large, high purity silica sand resource, it has taken us nearly five years to get all the necessary permits in place to finally start mining and monetizing the asset.
“We are excited to now be underway with simple, open pit, low-cost mining of the silica resource which is in extremely high demand from oil and gas operators who need to inject over 10,000 tons of sand into each frac well drilled.”
Mr Baller is the founder and former chief executive of Iofina, the AIM-listed iodine producer.
A float on London’s junior stock market is regarded by bankers as the likeliest route for Extrac next year.
“We will focus on fulfilling as much of the local demand as we can while increasingly moving into higher margin silica flour products, and ultimately into silicon metal which is severely undersupplied in North America but experiencing huge demand from transition economy sectors such as EV, batteries, solar and wind and silicon chips,” Mr Baller added.
The company is also starting to talk to potential advisers about its plan to go public.
