TEX reported that the competition to take over Freewest Resources Canada Inc has escalated further from the end of last week, because Cliffs Natural Resources Inc) has amended their offer to purchase the shares of Freewest and risen it to CAD 1 per share.

On December 10th 2009, Cliffs has amended their offer to purchase the shares of Freewest and proposed the shareholders of Freewest to purchase their shares at CAD 1 per share by a substantial rise from CAD 0.90 as offered previously. The purchases of Freewest shares will be paid by Cliffs shares. The amount to take over Freewest has been increased to CAD 240 million from that as previously estimated.

Noront, a rival company for Cliffs, already proposed on the end of November the shareholders of Freewest to purchase their shares at CAD 0.935 per share and, in comparison with this proposal by Noront, Cliffs has added to a considerable premium to the purchases. On the beginning of December, Cliffs offered to purchase the shares of Freewest at CAD 0.90 per share but made new proposal of a further rise for the shares.

For a reference, Cliffs has already acquired 12.4% of Freewest shares and expressed a plan to develop chrome deposit in Canada by means of investing CAD 800 million. On the basis of this chrome resource, Cliffs is scheduled to produce 400,000 to 800,000 tons per annum of ferrochrome and will proceed the largest project in North America for production of ferrochrome.

(Sourced from TEX Report Limited)