Cardero on the look out for acquisitions

Vancouver-based Cardero Resource (TSX-V: CDU) reported a brokered private placement to raise gross proceeds of up to Cdn$5.12mn (US$3.89mn). "The new money is mainly to fund new acquisitions," company president Henk van Alphen told BNamericas, adding the firm already had money in the bank to complete its current exploration program in Argentina and upcoming drill campaign in Mexico. The financing involves issuing 3.1 million units at Cdn$1.65 apiece with Pacific International Securities acting as agent. It should close in the first week of November, said van Alphen. Cardero announced last week that it had agreed with a private Peruvian company to buy 30,000ha of land in the Marcona district of the Pacific coastal belt of southern Peru. Approximately 10,000ha of the total is subject to an underlying agreement with Rio Tinto Mining and Exploration Limited, a unit of London-based mining giant Rio Tinto (LSE: RIO). The land is sitting in the "same belt" as the Marcona iron-oxide copper deposit that Rio Tinto is in the process of auctioning off, said van Alphen. Cardero expects to release drill results in mid-November from the program underway at its Olaroz silver project in northwest Argentina's Jujuy province, he said. The company plans to spend Cdn$1mn by the end of the year on drilling the project's Chingolo and Providencia prospects, according to the executive. This would include six holes of 200-250m each at Chingolo, he added. At the company's newly acquired 983ha Franco property in central Mexican state San Luis Potosi, Cardero is in the process of finalizing a Cdn$500,000 drill program to start "within a month," said van Alphen.