Moly Mines has bought Queensland Mining’s White Range copper, gold and cobalt project in North West Queensland.
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The unlisted Moly Mines Limited picked up the property near Cloncurry for $53 million. The deal includes a transfer of $45 million in cash and $8 million in convertible notes.
Queensland Mining said it had been trying to develop the asset for two years and told investors the offer was too attractive to refuse.
The White Range project is centred 40km south of Cloncurry and contains a total JORC compliant resource of 30.2Mt at 80 percent copper, 0.2g/t gold and 0.03% cobalt.
The project consists of three main deposits at Greenmount, Kuridala and Young Australian plus several smaller deposits at Mt McCabe, Vulcan and Desolation along with advanced exploration prospects.
The deal with Moly Mines also includes several smaller deposits (Mt McCabe, Vulcan and Desolation) along with numerous advanced exploration prospects including Copper Canyon (8km north of Greenmount), Chopper Ridge (2km NW of Greenmount) and Black Fort (12km SW of Greenmount).
It also includes four exploration permits for minerals which are the subject of the Option and Joint Venture Agreement with Teck Australia.
RELATED NEWS: White Range shows improved drilling results
Moly Mines said the deal would give them 100% ownership of a high-grade copper project, well located around existing copper operations and infrastructure, with strong near-term development potential.
“The White Range package of assets continue to show excellent exploration upside, as QMC demonstrated in their most recent announcement reporting assay results received from its recently completed RC drilling program in Young Australian,” the company said.
“The copper market has seen strong supply-demand fundamentals over the past 12 months, underpinned by expectations of strong demand from China.”
A 2005 pre-feasibility indicated the project has an annual production of 15-20,000t of copper cathode for a mine life of 10 years.