London-listed mineral exploration and development company Tertiary Minerals has announced that its 96%-owned Zambian subsidiary Tertiary Minerals Zambia (TMZ) has executed a full joint venture (JV) and shareholders’ agreement with local Zambian company Mwashia Resources to govern their future relationship regarding the Jacks copper project exploration licence.
The JV agreement has been made pursuant to the option agreement between TMZ, formerly Luangwa Minerals, and Mwashia, announced on August 2 last year.
The JV agreement provides that a new Zambian company Newco will be formed to be owned 90% by TMZ and 10% by Mwashia to own and operate the Jacks project.
Mwashia will then transfer the Jacks licence to Newco.
Newco will be funded by TMZ and/or Tertiary. Moreover, TMZ will hold an option, exercisable at any time, to buy Mwashia’s 10% interest for the amount of $3.5-million.
Meanwhile, a payment of $30 000 will now be made by Tertiary to Mwashia as required by the option agreement.
“[This] cements our relationship with Mwashia and provides a mechanism for TMZ to move to 100% ownership of the Jacks licence in future. Since signing the option agreement, we have worked closely with Mwashia as our local partner.
“Mwashia has been instrumental in the tribal and stakeholder engagement process that has allowed for the smooth running of our drilling programme at Jacks earlier this year and, more recently, for the soil sampling programme where we expect to release provisional results shortly,” Tertiary executive chairperson Patrick Cheetham said.
In addition to Jacks, Tertiary also holds options over four further licences held by Mwashia in Zambia.
“We anticipate this new agreement will form a template for those licences, should TMZ compete its expenditure requirements under the terms of those options,” Cheetham said.