Abenójar Tungsten Raises €170 Million in London Listing as El Moto Mine Advances
Abenójar raised €170 million in its London listing, but its shares remained below the offer price as it targets first production at El Moto in 2029.
Abenójar Tungsten has raised €170 million ($190 million) in London, giving its El Moto mine project a new funding base as construction advances. The flotation was the city’s largest mining initial public offering by funds raised since 2018. The next measure for the company is execution: it targets first commercial production in the first quarter of 2029, with a processing facility still in development.
The share performance on debut offered a more mixed signal. Abenójar priced the offering at 110 pence per share on Tuesday, when conditional trading began. By early afternoon on Friday, its shares had risen almost 3% to 105 pence, still below the offering price. The listing therefore raised substantial capital while leaving the stock below its initial price in its first days of trading.
That gap is relevant to how the market is valuing the project at this early stage. Abenójar is developing a mine that has yet to produce tungsten, so its planned output and commercial contribution remain ahead of it. For the company, the funds provide capital for construction; for shareholders, the near-term picture depends on progress against the development plan as well as the market’s assessment of the project.
Funding a mine under construction
The listing marks a change in Abenójar’s financing and development phase. The company says it has spent 14 years advancing El Moto from an exploration prospect to a mine under construction. Raising public-market capital now puts more attention on whether it can carry out the work required to move from construction to commercial production.
“Our investors have entrusted us with their capital for one clear purpose: to build this mine,” CEO Gonzalo García San Miguel said. “And that is exactly what we intend to do.” He described the listing as the beginning of a new chapter rather than an end in itself.
Abenójar says London was a natural venue because the city has a concentration of specialist mining investors able to support long-term development plans. The deal’s size also stands out against recent mining listings there: the previous largest by funds raised was Kazakhstan’s uranium producer Kazatomprom, which raised £311 million ($417 million) through a listing of global depositary receipts in 2018.
Abenójar’s market capitalization was £522 million. That puts the company within reach of the size associated with potential FTSE 250 inclusion, though index membership also depends on other eligibility criteria. Index potential is a point of market context, not a guarantee of inclusion or a substitute for progress at the mine.
El Moto’s role and remaining work
The El Moto project is in central Spain. Abenójar describes it as one of the world’s largest and highest-grade undeveloped tungsten deposits. Tungsten is used in defence systems, aerospace components, industrial cutting tools and electronics. China dominates global production and processing, which has increased the importance attached to developing additional sources in Europe.
El Moto includes plans for both a mine and a processing facility. Construction is underway, while development of a plant to refine tungsten concentrate from the mine remains at an early stage. That makes processing infrastructure a key part of the path to commercial production: mining the deposit alone would not complete the plan Abenójar has outlined.
The company has said both the planned mine and processing facility have been designated strategic projects by the European Union, according to García San Miguel. That designation gives context to the project’s place in regional supply plans, but the operating test remains practical: complete construction, develop the processing plant and reach the production target.
Those steps carry timing and execution risks. A first-quarter 2029 target requires construction and processing development to progress in sequence. The source provides no updated cost estimate or production forecast, so the scale of the remaining investment and the expected output cannot be assessed from the listing figures alone. For now, the clearest milestones to watch are progress on the mine, advancement of the plant and whether the company maintains its stated schedule.
García San Miguel said El Moto could become one of Europe’s most important tungsten sources and create jobs and long-term economic opportunities in Abenójar and the surrounding Castilla-La Mancha region. The company’s stated aim is ambitious, but those benefits depend on the project reaching production.
BMO Capital Markets and Peel Hunt acted as joint sponsors and joint global coordinators alongside Deutsche Bank. Canaccord Genuity served as joint bookrunner. With the listing complete, Abenójar’s ability to meet its construction and processing objectives will shape the next phase of the company’s story.
