Impact Minerals has acquired New Frontier Minerals’ Broken Hill East project in New South Wales in a bid to increase copper exploration.
Under the agreement, New Frontier will receive $275,000 in Impact shares based on the 14-day volume weighted average price of $0.0073 as of March 7.
Impact will also assume responsibility for a two per cent net smelter return royalty payable with respect to the tenements.
Impact’s ground in the Broken Hill region now covers 1770km2 near the iconic Broken Hill lead-zinc-silver mine, one of Australia’s largest lead mines.
“Since the discovery of the giant Broken Hill deposit in 1883, most previous exploration has focused on silver-lead-zinc mineralisation,” Impact said.
“However, various styles of copper mineralisation are also known to occur throughout the region and have been the focus of some exploration and shallow drilling, though with limited success.
“Impact became interested in the region’s copper potential during exploration for silver-lead-zinc at the Dora East prospect, located about 30km south of Broken Hill … This ultimately led to Impact’s successful application for the BHP Xplor program (in 2023).”
Through the BHP Xplor program, Impact completed a detailed magnetic interpretation of the south Broken Hill area, geophysical case studies over the Dora East deposit, and detailed mapping and sampling of 99 gabbro sills, the latter of which confirmed “significant potential for a larger copper deposit in the region”.
Impact will now develop identify copper targets for drilling while finalising the pre-feasibility study for the Lake Hope high-purity alumina project in Western Australia.
The Broken Hill East project is the third asset New Frontier has divested in the past 18 months. The company is now looking to divest the Mkushi copper project in Zambia.
“Staying the course with our strategy to be patient and find the right development partner for the non-core asset portfolio has paid dividends again,” New Frontier chairman Ged Hall said.
“Pleasingly, the value generated by these non-core asset sales is being redeployed, as it materialises, to progress development work on our core Harts Range and NWQ copper projects (in the Northern Territory and Queensland respectively).”
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