Latitude 66 will sell its Sylvania gold project in WA’s Pilbara region to gold producer Capricorn Metals for $1.5m worth of Capricorn shares, potentially two or more $750,000-milestone payments and a 1% royalty.
The deal is designed to help Latitude 66 fund its promising Finnish gold-cobalt project by unlocking value from what it says is a “non-core” asset.
Under the agreement, Latitude 66 will pick up the $1.5 million in Capricorn shares straight away with the additional payments contingent on the project's development.
They include a $750,000 payment when a JORC resource of more than 200,000 ounces of gold has been defined and further $750,000 payable each time a standalone mining operation is established on the tenements.
Latitude 66 has also locked in a one per cent net smelter royalty for precious minerals and a further 1.5 per cent royalty for non-precious minerals extracted from the project.
The Sylvania project covers 13 exploration licences spanning 1740 square kilometres, just 10km southwest of Newman and 60km west of Capricorn’s Karlawinda gold mine, making it the ideal purchaser of the tenements.
The sale and purchase contract will almost double Capricorn’s landholding in the region.
The deal also provides Capricorn with a big opportunity to potentially expand and add grade to its own open pit operation that already hosts a massive 86.7 million tonnes of ore grading 0.8 grams per tonne (g/t) for a 2.2-million-ounce resource that is throwing off about 118,000 ounces of annual gold production.
To streamline the sale to Capricorn, Latitude 66 has also cleaned up the ownership structure of Sylvania by buying a residual 10 per cent interest - held in three tenements by natural resources investment outfit Crest Investment Group - for $150,000.
Latitude 66 managing director Grant Coyle said: “With its nearby Karlawinda operation, Capricorn Metals Limited is a logical buyer for the Sylvania project and we are pleased to be realising latent value for shareholders from this non-core asset.”
Coyle said the latest deal will enable Latitude 66 to remain firmly committed to its Finnish projects, particularly its flagship Kuusamo Schist Belt (KSB) project and pursue opportunities to realise further value from its other Australian assets.
The company’s KSB gold-cobalt project has a 7.5 million tonne JORC compliant resource totalling 650,000 ounces of gold at 2.7 grams per tonne and 5,800 tonnes of cobalt grading 0.08 per cent.
Recent drill data pointed to the prospect of a sizeable increase in the resource and prompted the company to fast track a scoping study for a standalone development at site, with the results due in March.
Latitude’s Australian exploration efforts have mainly focused on its 17.5 per cent free-carried holding in ASX-listed Carnaby Resources’ Greater Duchess copper project near Mt Isa in Queensland.
A recent geophysical survey conducted by Carnaby jagged multiple new conductive plates at the project including one lying directly beneath recently tested sub-cropping material running as high as 6.7 per cent copper.
Hosting more than 280,000t of contained copper metal and growing, the Greater Duchess project is shaping up as a significant development and the bigger it gets, the more valuable the asset becomes for Latitude 66, adding another significant project to its developing exploration suite.
With the sale of Sylvania releasing funds to allow the company to ramp up exploration efforts in Finland, Latitude can afford the luxury of sitting on its Greater Duchess nest egg for now however and continue to benefit from Carnaby’s work as that project grows.
Nice work if you can get it.
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By James Pearson
