As Greatland Gold continues to advance its Havieron joint venture project, the company has teamed up with Rio Tinto to explore a project just next door.
The tenements – known more broadly as the Paterson South project – have Greatland Gold believing they could be “Havieron lookalikes”, with a Rio Tinto farm-in set to aggressively explore the prospects over the coming years.
Greatland Gold must pay Rio Tinto Exploration an up-front payment of $350,000 in either cash or Greatland shares to commence the farm-in.
Then, as part of Stage 1 of the farm-in, Greatland must spend a minimum of $1.1 million on exploration and complete 2000m of drilling before December 2024. To unlock a 51 per cent interest in Paterson South, the company must have spent $7.1 million on exploration expenditure and completed 7500m of drilling within four years.
A further 24 per cent interest (75 per cent in total) can be unlocked if Greatland spends an additional $14 million on exploration and completes a further 17,000m of drilling within three years of the Stage 1 farm-in being completed.
“The Paterson South project tenement package is an outstanding opportunity with a number of high priority, highly prospective and heritage cleared drill targets,” Greatland Gold managing director Shaun Day said.
“These targets include underexplored anomalies which the company considers to be the closest to a Havieron lookalike within the Paterson Province.
“Other opportunities include historical delineation of gold in rock chips and copper intersected with strong correlation to a Telfer-style deposit.”
Day said the addition of the Paterson South tenure more than doubles Greatland’s current footprint in the region, with the most prospective targets within 50km of the Telfer gold mine, which is currently owned by Newcrest Mining.
“Our farm-in and joint venture with Rio Tinto is consistent with our strategy of continuing to invest in exploration success, and aligns the companies responsible for the discovery of Havieron and Winu, the two biggest and most significant orebodies found within the Paterson Province since Telfer in the 1970s,” Day said.
Greatland Gold said it expects to commence drilling at Paterson South this year.
Subscribe to Australian Resources & Investment and receive the latest news on commodity prices, resource developments, executive movements and more.