Seabed phosphate mine developer Chatham Rock Phosphate has ''paused'' in its application for a marine consent until it clinches its separate mining licence.
In July, Chatham raised a disappointing $1.58 million from its initial public offering which had targeted between $4 million and $10 million.
Chatham has spent most of almost $22 million it had raised earlier on research and development.
Since the capital raising, Chatham's shares had fallen from 36c to about 32c yesterday.
Chatham managing director Chris Castle said yesterday that following the recent passing of changes to the Crown Minerals Act, Government permitting agency New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals identified some areas of work Chatham had not completed in the mining licence application, including iwi consultation, and it requested more technical information.
''We believe it is critical we receive the [mining] licence before we spend significant more resources, in both time and money, on the marine consent process,'' Mr Castle said in a statement yesterday.
Chatham proposes to use a suction dredge to lift the top layer of phosphate off the seabed at depths up to 425m, around the Chatham Rise.
At the point of extraction beginning, Chatham would become the shore-based marketer of the phosphate, leaving cornerstone shareholder Boskalis to mine it.
Mr Castle estimated the mining licence would be received ''in a matter of weeks''.
Then submissions would continue on the marine consent application, which would include new data from a recent Niwa cruise that Chatham co-funded and improvements suggested by peer reviewers overseas on some aspects of the company's environmental impact assessment.
''On that basis we are going to push the pause button and wait until we have received the mining licence, before we submit our final marine consent application,'' Mr Castle said.
