Aim-listed Greatland Gold has entered into a farm-in and joint venture (JV) agreement with diversified major Rio Tinto to accelerate exploration across 1 884 km² of prospective tenure in the Paterson province of Western Australia.

The agreement secures Greatland access to a highly prospective tenure in line with the junior’s Australian asset growth strategy.

"The Paterson South project tenement package is an outstanding opportunity with a number of high-priority, highly prospective and heritage cleared drill targets.  We expect that some of these targets can be incorporated in our 2023 drilling campaign.

“These targets include underexplored anomalies which the company considers to be the closest to a Havieron lookalike within the Paterson province.

“Other opportunities include historical delineation of gold in rock chips and copper intersected with strong correlation to a Telfer style deposit. This tenure complements the company's current ground position to provide a 105 km contiguous holding. The addition of the Paterson South project more than doubles our current footprint with the most prospective targets within 50 km of Telfer.

Greatland has made an initial minimum commitment of A$1.1-million of expenditure and 2 000 m of drilling before December 2024.

In terms of the agreement, Greatland is entitled to earn up to a 75% JV interest in the project tenements under a two-stage farm-in arrangement. In Stage 1, Greatland is entitled to earn a 51% JV interest in the Paterson South project by incurring at least A$7.1-million of exploration expenditure and completing 7 500 m of drilling within four years; and in Stage 2, Greatland is entitled to earn an additional 24% JV interest in the Paterson South project by spending at least an additional A$14-million of exploration expenditure and completing a further 17 000 m of drilling within three years of completing the Stage 1 farm-In.