(ShareCast News) - Australian gold and copper miner SolGold confirmed its shareplacing on AIM on Friday, raising £16.1munder the first tranche of the deal negotiated with Maxit Capital.The proceeds from the capital raising will be used to continue to fund the company's exploration of its flagship Cascabel copper gold porphyry project in Ecuador, for general working capital purposes and ongoing corporate costs, SolGold said.Maxit has an option to put an an extra $15m as part of the deal. It also converted fees owed into SolGold shares.The company added that it intends to contract additional drill rigs to expand exploration on the overall Cascabel concession whilst also continuing to work towards the delivery of a maiden resource at Alpala.Executive Director Nick Mather said: "We are very pleased to have Maxit and a number of its clients as shareholders, and now have the funds available to enable aggressive drill testing of the other seven priority targets in the Cascabel cluster, and the definition of a maiden resource at Alpala."