JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Apollo Minerals has entered into an agreement to acquire the remaining 20% interest in the Couflens tungsten/copper/gold project in the Pyrenees region of southern France from ASX-listed Variscan Mines.
Apollo would then own 100% of the Couflens project, which covers a 42 km2 licence area containing the high-grade historical Salau tungsten mine.
Apollo said on Thursday that it would rapidly advance its exploration activities, including the definition of a maiden mineral resources estimate for tungsten, and start planning for an initial drilling campaign targeting gold and tungsten.
A number of targeted field exploration programmes, focused initially on gold, have returned gold grades of up to 24.5 g/t from rock chip samples and resulted in the identification of numerous anomalies prospective for gold and tungsten.
These samples were subsequently assayed for tungsten and returned grades of up to 8.25%. Gold grades of up to 8.9 g/t were present in samples from the tailings from historical operations and the average tungsten grade of the tailings samples was around 0.5%.
Apollo is funding the $4.25-million transaction using a combination of cash and future share payments based on the achievement of project milestones, as well as assuming the liabilities of Variscan France. The majority of the consideration is deferred, and is weighted towards share based payments in the future, thereby limiting the upfront cash outlay.
Variscan CEO Stewart Dickson said the transaction would deliver a number of benefits, including a substantially reduced cost base while retaining exposure to the company’s French licences.
“Following our recent [Rosario copper project] acquisition in Chile, this transaction marks the latest step in the delivery of our change programme,” he added.