TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Canadian gold major Goldcorp on Monday caused the TSX-V-listed stock of junior Independence Gold to soar 35% after it announced that it would take a 19.9% stake in the company giving Goldcorp access to a project portfolio that ranges from early-stage grassroots exploration to advanced-stage resource expansion.
Under terms of an agreement, Goldcorp would acquire 10.88-million shares of Independence at a price of C$0.13 each, for a total purchase price of C$1.45-million.
Vancouver-based Goldcorp advised that it acquired the fellow Vancouver-based company’s shares for investment purposes.
It had, however, been a policy of Goldcorp CEO David Garofalo to offload the exploration risk to juniors. Garofalo explained earlier this year during an interview with Mining Weekly Online that while the company was mainly focusing internally for growth, it was cultivating the next generation of large-scale gold projects by placing seed capital with multiple gold juniors – a strategy he also pursued during his time at HudBay Minerals and Agnico Eagle Mines.
Independence currently held interests in the 3Ts exploration project, in central British Columbia, where it had outlined an inferred resource of 5.5-million tonnes grading 2.52 g/t for 441 000 oz of gold, as well as 12.54-million ounces of silver grading 71.5 g/t.
The company also held several projects in the Yukon Territory, including the Boulevard project, all of which were at an early stage of exploration and evaluation with no resources yet identified.
Independence’s TSX-V-listed stock gained C$0.06 a share early Monday morning to trade at C$0.21 apiece at noon in Toronto.
Edited by: Samantha Herbst
Creamer Media Deputy Editor
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