Legendary former New Zealand national rugby team captain, Sean Fitzpatrick is about to become a regular at ASX-listed junior explorer, White Cliff Minerals. Fitzpatrick has been appointed as Strategic Advisor to the company in a deal that will also see White Cliff pick up a slew of lucrative-looking gold projects in the Land of the Long White Cloud.
New Zealand was so named after Polynesian explorers noticed a long white cloud in the distance as they braved the seas in their canoes in search of land. Mythology has it that the long white cloud eventually guided them to New Zealand and in a modern-day twist of the myth, it seems that White Cliff has noticed New Zealand’s substantial gold halo after picking up a grab bag of interesting-looking gold projects that would not have lasted five minutes on the market if they were in the Goldfields of WA.
The acquisition will see White Cliff pick up New Zealand privateer firm, Midway Resources that is chaired by Fitzpatrick.
It is a mostly scrip deal worth up to $5 million with about half of that swinging in performance rights for the vendors that are payable only after certain milestones are met.
Midway will be reimbursed about $100,000 at the front end.
Midway holds three interesting gold, copper and platinum group elements projects in New Zealand that will become subject of the buyout with White Cliff, the Muirs, Mareburn and Longwood Range projects.
Muirs in the North Island already hosts a non-JORC-compliant inferred gold resource of 5.15 million tonnes of ore at an average grade of 1.34 grams per tonne for 222,000 ounces of contained gold across the Massey Reef and Muirs Reef quartz vein deposits.
Exploration work being contemplated as White Cliff looks to gain a better understanding of gold mineralisation at Muirs includes detailed structural mapping from existing surveys, geochemical sampling, and infill and step-out drilling at both Massey Reef and Muirs Reef.
Muirs comes with a grab bag of historical drill results that are begging for follow-up including 11.0 metres grading an average 11.0 grams per tonne gold from 48m including 2.0m at 38.4 g/t gold, more than an ounce to the tonne.
One 28m historic intersection at Muirs came in at 1.57 g/t gold, also from 48m and another 14m intersection went 2.76 g/t gold from 54m.
In fact, Muirs boasts a suite of old drill hole numbers that would be sure to quicken the pulses of some of the more gardened explorers.
Mareburn in the Otago gold field of the South Island sits less than 10 kilometres from OceanaGold’s long-running Macraes gold mine – which has produced more than five million ounces of gold – and contains several initial walk-up drill targets.
According to White Cliff, several drilling programs were conducted in the Mareburn area by OceanaGold, with encouraging shallow RC drill intercepts including 10metres at an average grade of 2.4 g/t gold from 38m including 3m at 7.1 g/t from 38m.
Other notable past OceanaGold drill intercepts around Mareburn were 10m going 1.99 g/t from 2m including 6m at 3 g/t from 5m and 2m at 3.04 g/t from 2m.
The Longwood Range gold-copper-PGE project, also in the South Island 40km west of Invercargill, has yielded historic production of approximately 88,000 ounces of gold and 1,500 ounces of platinum.
White Cliff Minerals’ Non-Executive Chairman, Michael Soucik said: “We believe that the proposed acquisition of Midway Resources is complementary to the company’s existing portfolio. The assets hold a mixture of historical results and exploration upside. The company will endeavour to define a maiden JORC resource at the Muirs project from the historical results and undertake a drilling program at the Mareburn and Longwood projects where exploration targets have been identified.”
The three NZ projects span a combined land position of 467 square kilometres and are covered by one granted mineral exploration permit, two mineral exploration permit applications and two prospecting permit applications.
White Cliff says it plans to launch into generating a maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate for Muirs based on historic drill data, much like the company’s approach with its historic Reedy South gold project in WA.
The company hopes to kick-start first-pass drilling programs at both Muirs and Mareburn in the near term.
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