The company holds some promising nickel ground, and is hoping to raise $3 million from the public through an IPO launched on Wednesday to fund further exploration.

Bullion has tenements pegged in the Lake Johnston area of Western Australia, 180km south-west of Norseman, where it has spent $2.5 million exploring on the ground since 1993.

The land package, totalling 925sq.km, sits to the north and south of the Emily Ann and Maggie Hays nickel sulphide deposits held by LionOre outright in joint venture with Billeton’s QNI.

“LionOre has spent $40 million exploring and proving up deposits to date and will spend $60 million on a plant right on our doorstop,” said Bullion’s managing director Mark Freemantle, who spent nine years with merchant banker Rothschild.

“The best results were found right on the border between the tenements.

“We have only done shallow drilling so far, but it has produced results of 14m at 5.6% nickel sulphide.”

Company secretary Mark English said the productivity of Maggie Hays and the 1997 discovery of Emily Ann made the area extremely attractive for further exploration.

“With 84,000t of dirt at Maggie Hays selling at $18,000t it all looked pretty attractive in 1997 when we first purchased the tenements,” English said.

The spot price of nickel sulphide at the moment is still high at $12,000/t.

Bullion’s previous joint venture exploration with Goldfields Ltd found nickel and gold anomalies to the south of Maggie Hays.

“In our southern tenements we have found nickel and a large gold anomaly,” Freemantle said.

“Gold is not sexy in this current market, but it’s like a free option for us if the gold price goes back up.”

Freemantle said previous results from exploratory work with Goldfields in addition to LionOre’s groundwork made for a solid bases for further exploration.

“Bullion is an exploration company, not greenfields,” he said.

“We’ve put the money in so we know where the anomalies are.

“I think we will have a fairly focused exploration program because we are certainly not just going to spray money aimlessly over 925km.”

An added bonus for Bullion is the presence of the neighbouring LionOre treatment plant.

“If we find a resource, depending on the size of it and the grade of it, we would go it alone or go next door,” Freemantle said.

Bullion’s former life as an oil and gas explorer in the mid-eighties meant Bullion retained a shareholder base of more than 1000 punters, all of which will get an entitlement to the 15 million shares and options on offer. Overall 30 million shares and options are on offer.

“With cash in the bank and a market capitalisation at issue price of about $6 million, we’ll have an asset backing of 20c per share which matches what we are issuing out,” Freemantle said.

“There is not a lot of issue capital out there and already we are generating a fair bit of interest from the equities community.

“We have budgeted to spend in the first two years $1.7million in the ground, so our primary focus for now really is to add value for our shareholders at the end of the day.”

The company is underwritten by Intersuisse and expects to be quoted mid-October.