Maritana tightens grip on ground next to WA Black Swan gold hub

Maritana Minerals has further tightened its grip around the company’s Black Swan processing hub near Kalgoorlie, unveiling a deal to buy a strategic package of tenements sitting right on the doorstep of its existing infrastructure.

The company says it will acquire 100 per cent of the ground from Nano Metals, adding significant tenure across prospective lithologies and important geological structures that are already known to host gold and nickel mineralisation in the WA Goldfields. 

The key tenement in the package is contiguous with Maritana’s ground. It sits immediately north of the Black Swan processing hub and straddles the northward strike extension of the Wilsons gold prospect within Maritana’s ground.

Maritana has already merged the new ground into its target ranking matrix and overall exploration strategy.

The acquisition will lift the company’s WA goldfields footprint by 83.5 square kilometres to 1235.5 square kilometres. The agreed consideration is $345,000 in cash and includes 509,259 restricted Maritana shares issued at a deemed price of $1.08 per share, with settlement targeted for the June 2026 quarter, subject to the usual approvals.

While this particular story is clearly about strategic tenure, the bigger picture is Maritana’s push to build a meaningful goldfields production epic around its Black Swan hub-and-spoke plans.

Managing director and chief executive officer Grant Haywood said: “This acquisition continues our regional consolidation strategy and secures key additional tenure around our Black Swan Processing Hub. The tenure would also facilitate potential extensions and optimisation of the current Black Swan infrastructure in future, if required.”

The company previously flagged Black Swan as the centrepiece of a standalone processing strategy and says that securing the extra ground on its doorstep will strengthen its exploration optionality and also preserve greater flexibility for any potential infrastructure expansion.

Maritana says the new ground could also prove prospective at Wilsons, where a northwest-southeast trending soil anomaly passes only 200m away from its Black Swan infrastructure. 

It believes the geochemical signature may potentially strike further northwest across the northern boundary and into the newly acquired tenure, which Maritana plans to fold into the company’s exploration strategy for next year.

In the Goldfields, good processing optionality is hard to come by, while good ground – especially with gold anomalism – sitting right next to existing plant is becoming almost mythical. 

Maritana’s recent land grab looks like a shrewd bit of housekeeping that puts the company in pole position if nearby targets morph into well-defined gold stories and the Black Swan hub continues to build momentum.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au