Future Battery Minerals (ASX:FBM) has been granted an exclusive six-month option to acquire Miramar Resources’ (ASX:M2R) Randalls Gold Project in the Goldfields region of Western Australia.
The agreement sees Future Battery’s subsidiary Ore Resource to attain 100% interest in Randalls’ exploration licences, responsible for a $50,000 option fee on execution of the option period, along with covering minimum expenditure costs, rents and outgoings, heritage, and rehabilitation related to activities.
Upon completion, Future Battery will make a $125,000 cash payment and issue $125,000 worth of shares based on the 10-day volume weighted average price.
Miramar will attain a 1% net smelter royalty over production, holding the right to buy back 0.5% for $500,000.
A deferred consideration of $250,000 will be paid after returning a JORC-compliant resource greater than 250,000 ounces of gold grading more than 1 gram per tonne. A further $250,000 will be paid upon achieving a resource greater than 500,000 ounces of gold across the tenements at the same grade conditions.
Future Battery is currently conducting a review of historical drilling data as a part of its due diligence, which will be followed by geophysical and geochemical reviews before involving native title parties for a Heritage Protection Agreement.
New opportunities
Future Battery CEO Nick Rathjen describes the Randalls Project location within a “highly fertile gold region” reveals an exciting exploration opportunity for the company.
“The potential strategic expansion of our tenure holdings across the Eastern Western Australian Goldfields delivers us enhanced exploration leverage combined with clear operating synergies with our Coolgardie Gold and Lithium Project,” Rathjen says.
“It also delivers us greater opportunity to build on the proven gold targeting success already delivered at Miriam with our recent maiden drill testing of that ground.”
Miramar Executive Chairman Allan Kelly explains the execution of this binding agreement allows the company to shift its focus towards the Gidji and Bangemall projects.
“We have some really exciting projects which have potential for near-term discoveries of gold and critical minerals including copper, nickel, platinum group elements (PGE) and rare earth elements,” Kelly says.
“Miramar retains upside exposure to any future exploration success, development and/or production from that project.”
Miramar intends to conduct drill testing across multiple bedrock gold targets at the Gidji Joint Venture Gold Project, located 15km north of Kalgoorlie.
“The recently announced multi-million-dollar, multi-year, exploration joint venture agreement with Japanese mining giant Sumitomo (TYO:8053) over our Bangemall Nickel-Copper-PGE Project in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia means that exploration at Bangemall will be fully funded for the foreseeable future and the majority of our resources can instead be allocated to exploration at Gidji,” Kelly adds.
Located 70km east of Kalgoorlie, the Randalls Project is located along the Randall Fault, prospective for gold and lithium mineralisation.
Write to Maddison Elliott at Mining.com.au
Images: Stock & Miramar Resources
