Toronto- and New York-listed Alamos Gold on Monday announced a definitive agreement to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of TSX-V-listed Orford Mining Corporation.

The acquisition will consolidate Alamos’ existing ownership of Orford shares through which the company will add the highly prospective Qiqavik gold project, located in Quebec. Alamos will also be acquiring interests in several exploration stage critical mineral and gold projects in Quebec, including West Raglan, the Joutel Properties, and Nunavik Lithium.

Under the terms of the agreement, Orford shareholders will receive 0.005588 of an Alamos common share for each Orford share. This represents a value of C$0.10 an Orford share, based on the 20-day volume weighted average trading price of Alamos’ shares.

Alamos currently owns about 27.5% of Orford’s basic common shares outstanding. Excluding Alamos’ existing ownership of Orford, Alamos expects to issue about 0.9-million shares for total consideration of C$16-million.

“Our acquisition of Orford is consistent with our strategy of building out a pipeline of high-quality, long-term projects, in good jurisdictions, to complement our near-term organic growth projects in Canada. Qiqavik fits that strategy perfectly as an attractive early-stage gold project, located in one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world. We see excellent long-term potential within the underexplored Qiqavik district and look forward to building off Orford’s success with a larger and sustained exploration programme,” said president and CEO John McCluskey.

The Qiqavik project is a camp-scale property covering 438 km² in the Cape Smith Belt in Nunavik.

Orford started exploration on the project in 2016, and since that time has identified over 40 highly prospective targets across the previously underexplored property through mapping, prospecting, till sampling, geophysics, and limited drilling.

These targets include several high-grade boulder and gold grain-in-till trends, as well as outcrop gold showings across the property. In addition, a significant 4-km-wide by 3-km-long gold geochemical dispersal train has been identified in till down-ice from a segment of the Qiqavik break, or a related secondary structure, in the central portion of the Qiqavik project area which has not yet been drill tested.

Alamos notes that Qiqavik has the potential for multiple significant new greenfield discoveries.

The West Raglan property is currently under an option agreement with Wyloo Metals, whereby Wyloo can earn up to up to 80% of the project for total expenditures of C$25-million over seven years. In 2023, Wyloo satisfied the first earn-in milestone and acquired 51% ownership interest in the West Raglan project and has provided notification that it intends on earning-in an additional 19% to take its interest to 70%.

The Joutel Eagle is located along the historical Eagle-Telbel mine trend in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt. Orford can earn 100% interest in the 50 km² Joutel Eagle Property through an option agreement from Globex Mining Enterprises. The Joutel Eagle Property is an advanced exploration stage gold property with about 20 000 m of historic drilling and 3 253 m of current drilling completed by Orford in 2022 and 2023 that has identified multiple gold zones.

The property is adjacent to Agnico Eagle’s past producing Eagle-Telbel operation which produced more than 1.1-million ounces of gold.

The 100%-owned Nunavik Lithium properties comprise 598 km² of claims in the Cape Smith area of Nunavik. Following the acquisition of the claims in 2023, lithium/cesium/tantalum- (LCT-) bearing pegmatites were discovered on three projects through the initial exploration programme. An additional 12 new exploration targets for LCT pegmatites were subsequently identified during the 2023 field programme based on till geochemical results. These results also generated two potential exploration targets within the properties for gold.