TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Gold miner Agnico Eagle Mines on Friday announced another strategic investment in a junior company, this time paying $11.25-million for 7.5-million share units in explorer Probe Mines.

Agnico Eagle bought the units from Cormark Securities at $1.50 each. Each unit comprised one Probe share and three-quarters of a share purchase warrant of Probe, which would entitle the holder to acquire one Probe share at $2.10 apiece for a period of two years from the closing date.

The gold miner would hold 9.94% of the issued and outstanding shares of Probe on a nondiluted basis and 16.19% should all the warrants be exercised.

Once the transaction was finalised, which was expected to take place on Wednesday, it would give Agnico Eagle a foot in the door to Probe’s flagship Borden gold project, a significant multimillion-ounce gold discovery located near Chapleau, Ontario.

Discovered in a previously unexplored area situated close to well-developed infrastructure, the Borden project has a pit-constrained resource of more than 4.3-million ounces averaging 1.03 g/t of gold at a 0.5 g/t gold cutoff. Eighty-five per cent of the total pit-constrained resource was in the National Instrument 43-101-compliant indicated category.

Probe said a recent discovery of a new high-grade zone in the south-east potentially allowed for alternative development scenarios with lower capital costs and less sensitivity to the gold price.

When Mining Weekly Online recently asked Agnico Eagle CEO Sean Boyd about the company’s growth plans beyond the development of its Meliadine project, which was not expected to produce gold before 2018, he pointed to the four seemingly insignificant strategic investments the company had made so far this year.

He noted that the company’s flagship operation, La Ronde, in Quebec, was the direct result of a similar strategic investment the company made in the 1970s.

The gold mining company, in April, agreed to buy a 9.96% interest in Mexico-focused junior Kootenay Silver, through a $4.75-million investment in a private placement. In the same month, it also bought a 9.96% interest in project developer Sulliden Gold and its Shahuindo project, located in a prolific gold-producing district in northern Peru, through a $24-million private placement.