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Consisting of three blocks, the area is immediately south of its recently acquired small Cascade mine and is on the Buller plateau next to the Escarpment deposit area of its flagship open cut project.

The company said the acquisition will complete its consolidation of its “South Buller” operation.

Bathurst has set an exploration target of 15-25 million tonnes of coal for these blocks and expects the quality to be either hard or semi-soft coking coal.

The acquisition also comes with fully consented permits for two small underground operations, but Bathurst prefers open cut mining and noted they have the potential to be converted into surface mining permits.

There is also a “partially consented” permit for one open cut operation.

These Brookdale tenements additionally come with a permit for trucking up to 250,000 tonnes per annum off the plateau plus consent for a stockpile facility of up to 90,000t at Fairdown.

The deal for this acreage was struck for $US12 million cash and 15 million Bathurst shares.

To regain funds for more mine development, Bathurst’s non-underwritten institutional placement will be at a price of $1.05 per share, which is a 10.3% discount to the closing price of Bathurst shares on Friday.

The Australian branch of UBS and Helmsec Global Capital will act as joint lead managers of the placement.

Bathurst managing director Hamish Bohannan said the Brookdale acquisition would equate to a price of $1.40 a tonne if the midpoint of the 20Mt exploration target is reached.

“When combined with the potential operational synergies from merging Brookdale with our own operations, Bathurst is confident of the upside available to its shareholders from the acquisition,” he said.

“Following the completion of the equity raising, Bathurst Resources will be fully funded to meet its near term capital and development requirements.”

The Buller hard coking coal project on New Zealand’s South Island is initially targeting 0.65-1Mtpa when it starts open cut mining in the December quarter.

There are further plans to hit 2Mtpa under second stage development and then double that to 4Mtpa in later ramp up.

Bathurst shares remain in a trading halt with the institutional placement expected to be made tomorrow morning. The shares were in a trading halt yesterday and closed at $1.17 on Friday.