Elementos and Chinalco dissolve Millennium JV, sell assets

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Junior tin developer Elementos and fellow-listed Chinalco Yunnan Copper Resources have dissolved their Millennium joint venture (JV), in Queensland, with the parties selling their interest in five mining leases to ASX-listed Hammer Metals.

Elementos and Chinalco in 2013 entered into the JV agreement to explore for copper, cobalt and gold at the Millennium project area, under which Chinalco had the right to earn a 51% interest in the project area by spending A$1.2-million.

Chinalco pointed out on Wednesday that, under the terms of the JV agreement, the company still had some A$400 000 of exploration expenditure to commit in order to earn a majority share in the project area.

Chinalco MD Paul Williams said that, while exploration carried out by the company over the past few years has indicated that mineralisation could extend along the strike zone and at depth, there remained ‘significant uncertainty’ that the resource was the size of a previously stated exploration target of one-million tonnes of copper or copper equivalent.

Further, Williams noted that follow-up drilling would likely be deep and would be at significant additional costs.

Given these circumstances, Chinalco believed that a retirement from the Millennium JV was in the best interest of shareholders, and would allow the company to focus on other opportunities.

Hammer Metals would issue 500 000 of its own shares to Chinalco and would pay Elementos A$57 950 for their respective interests in the Millennium mining leases, with the junior firm saying that the acquisition secured a prospective high-grade cobalt-copper-gold target that complemented the company’s existing tenement portfolio in the region.