Leederville-based mining company Fox Resources Ltd will explore and develop discoveries of all minerals except diamonds on the West Pilbara tenements of De Beers Australia, after signing an agreement with the giant.
Leederville-based mining company Fox Resources Ltd will explore and develop discoveries of all minerals except diamonds on the West Pilbara tenements of De Beers Australia, after signing an agreement with the giant.
Under the agreement Fox has a 24 month window to purchase exploration data from DBAE, and upto 10 years to define a JORC compliant resource. Fox will also pay a 2% Net Smelter Royalty for any non diamond commodity won from the tenements.
The full text of a company announcement is pasted below
Fox Resources Limited ("Fox") (ASX: FXR) is pleased to announce an access agreement with De Beers Australia Exploration (DBAE), which allows Fox to access, explore and develop discoveries on DBAE's West Pilbara tenements (Figure 1) for all minerals including nickel, copper, gold, zinc, iron ore, uranium but excludes diamonds.
"This agreement will form the platform for Fox to consolidate and strengthen its position in the West Pillbara. It is very exciting for our shareholders that the Company now has increased its access to tenements for exploration by over 200%. We believe that these
tenements hold the key to unlocking a number of potential minerals including iron ore and uranium", Don Harper, Managing Director said.
Under the agreement Fox has a 24 month window to purchase exploration data from DBAE, and upto 10 years to define a JORC compliant resource. Fox will also pay a 2% Net Smelter Royalty for any non diamond commodity won from the tenements.
The bulk of the DBAE tenements are 70Km south of Fox's Radio Hill Operations and consist of 2037km2 of tenements. Of this package 1118km2 of the tenements are granted. The total tenement package represents a 200% increase of effective land access in the West Pilbara for Fox to some 3,000km2.
Work completed by DBAE to date has focused on diamonds only. A large and extensive exploration database exists for this commodity with the excellent work undertaken also able to be used for all other commodities which Fox has the mineral rights to. To date DBAE has spent $1.7 million. The work includes;
- Geochemical samples covering all the tenements
- Air borne Magnetics
- Hyperspectral Surveys
This data is able to be purchased from DBAE under the agreement. Fox will review the data and will formulate a defined exploration strategy based on the results of the review. Fox has been active in the West Pilbara with exploration and subsequent mining and this
agreement is part of the vision of increasing our tenement holdings and success in the West Pilbara. This also reaffirms our company focus as being a West Pilbara miner and explorer.
Most commodities are on a large scale in the West Pilbara, and this augers well for Fox to explore for world class precious, base metal and uranium deposits. Significant geological structures that exist on Fox's current tenements are also believed to extend
through the DBAE tenements.
"We will get to work immediately on collating and assessing the exploration information available to us from the excellent De Beers exploration database. As data becomes available the Company looks forward to updating the market on the potential targets and
exploration strategy, "Gus Wolff, General Manager Exploration said.
Fox believes that the opportunities that the DBAE agreement offers are exceptional for providing continued growth in an area of Australia that is continuing to grow as a mineral province.
