Apart from announcing that it has the support of ANZ Banking, HSBC Bank and ING Bank in an Aus$220m seven-year funding line for its Havieron gold-copper project, the Western Australian gold prospector has declared its latest connection with Rio Tinto Exploration, the wholly owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto.
Greatland Gold (LON:GGP) has entered into a farm-in and joint venture arrangement with Rio Tinto to accelerate exploration across 1,884km² of highly prospective tenure within the Paterson Province of Western Australia, which is located near its world-class Havieron gold-copper project.
The tenements are an outstanding package, which host several underexplored anomalies which Greatland considers to be the closest to a Havieron lookalike within the Paterson Province.
The Aim-quoted company is entitled to earn up to a 75% joint venture interest in the Project Tenements under a two-stage farm-in arrangement.
CEO Shaun Day stated that:
“The Paterson South Project tenement package is an outstanding opportunity with a number of high priority, highly prospective and heritage cleared drill targets. We expect that some of these targets can be incorporated in our 2023 drilling campaign.
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.
This tenure complements the Company’s current ground position to provide a 105km contiguous holding. The addition of the Paterson South Project more than doubles our current footprint with the most prospective targets within 50km of Telfer.
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.”
Greatland is a mining development and exploration company focused primarily on precious and base metals. Its flagship asset is the world-class Havieron gold-copper project in the Paterson Province of Western Australia, which was discovered by Greatland and is presently under development in joint venture with ASX gold major, Newcrest Mining Limited (which has recently agreed to a takeover by the Newmont Corporation).
Havieron is located approximately 45km east of Newcrest’s existing Telfer gold mine.
The Greatland Gold share price rose 12% to 8.10p upon the news, before easing back on some profit-taking to be 8% better at the current 7.8p, at which it is capitalised at £390m.
It has been suggested that this morning’s news could well have caused embarrassment to investors holding ‘short positions’ in the stock, which would further encourage a higher price in reaction.
