Welcome to a roundup of some of our financing, exploration, and development stories on Theassay.com over the last week. To keep up to date with all the latest headlines, subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Financing and M&A
Plenty of financing news over the last seven days, starting with NuLegacy Gold (TSXV: NUG | OTC: NULGF) creating a 2% gross overriding royalty (GOR) on its flagship Red Hill Property in the Cortez gold trend of Nevada, USA. The company has announced this, in preparation for its 2023 drilling programme, along with the possibility of selling the property to a producing company in future.
Currently the Red Hill Property supports a 3.0% GOR, half of which (1.5%) is held by Metalla Royalty & Streaming Ltd. who purchased it in an arm’s length transaction for approximately US$3.3M in three years ago in May 2020 when gold prices were circa US$1,600/oz.
Also, Mako Gold Limited (ASX:MKG) confirmed the issue of 70,747,704 fully ordinary shares pursuant to Tranche 1 of a placement to sophisticated and professional investors announced to the market on 1 May 2023.
Mako will also issue one attaching unlisted option (placement options) for every two new shares issued pursuant to the placement. The placement options will be exercisable at A$0.05, each with an expiry date 24 months from date of issue and will be issued subject to shareholder approval at the general meeting.
New exploration and development
In exploration and development news, we heard that Steppe Gold Ltd (TSX: STGO) and Anacortes Mining Corp. (TSXV: XYZ) have entered into an arrangement agreement pursuant to which Steppe Gold will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Anacortes by way of a court-approved plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act, in an all-share transaction.
On the closing of the transaction, shareholders of Steppe Gold and Anacortes will own approximately 79% and 21% of the combined company, respectively, on a basic basis.
“This transaction transforms Steppe Gold into a multi asset, multi jurisdiction gold company with existing production and development projects in two of the most exciting and still untapped gold provinces in the world in both Mongolia and Peru. The new combined company will have a potential development profile of over 200,000oz and a resource base of over 4.5M gold equivalent ounces,” Steppe Gold executive chairman, Matthew Wood, said.
Additionally, Talisman Mining Ltd (ASX: TLM) identified new drill targets from recently conducted ground-based geophysical surveys at its wholly-owned Lachlan Copper-Gold project in New South Wales (NSW), Australia.
The new targets include priority chargeable anomalies directly associated with historic high-grade copper workings identified from induced polarization (IP) surveys. Chargeable and conductive anomalies have been interpreted to indicate the presence of blind sulphides, providing Talisman with drill-ready targets with potential for a significant discovery.
Finally, Galileo Mining Ltd (ASX: GAL) identified a number of new targets with assays from recent drilling at the Callisto palladium-nickel discovery as it makes drilling preparations at the company’s 100% owned Norseman project in Western Australia.
“Callisto continues to deliver good drill intercepts highlighting that we have yet to understand the full extent of the discovery.” Managing director, Brad Underwood, said.
Drilling results
In drilling results, Siren Gold Limited’s (ASX: SNG) first drillhole at its Auld Creek prospect in New Zealand has intersected two gold shoots.
Executive chairman, Brian Rodan, said, “We are very pleased to report that the assays confirm the presence of consistent high-grade gold and antimony mineralization across the entire Fraternal intercept. AXDDH005 also intersected a broad zone of mineralization, with assays pending.”
Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. (TSXV: BAY) obtained further successful drilling and geophysical results from its Storm Copper Project on Somerset Island, Nunavut, Canada.
This is the second drilling programme for American West Metals Limited, who are the project operator, since entering an option agreement with Aston Bay in March 2021.
The company also announced the reverse circulation (RC) drill programme is continuing at the 4100N Zone, with a focus on defining a maiden copper resource for the near-surface copper mineralization within its Storm Project.
Finally, five additional drill holes have been completed at the 4100N Zone and continue to highlight the significant resource potential of the near-surface mineralization at Storm. All nine drill holes completed to date within the current programme have intersected thick intervals of visual sulphides, which have been confirmed to contain copper based on portable XRF analysis.
Other company news
Centaurus Metals (ASX: CTM) successfully produced the first-ever nickel sulphate from its flagship Jaguar Nickel Project in Brazil as part of the final phase of work undertaken as part of the Jaguar Pilot Plant test work programme.
The successful production of nickel sulphate, cobalt hydroxide and zinc hydroxide concludes the pilot programme with only analytical assay work on the products and thickening and filtration vendor testing on the cobalt and zinc hydroxide products to be completed over the next month.
