Agrees To Acquire 6194 sq km Of Gold Ground In West Africa
Manas Resources Limited (ASX: MSR) has entered into a Sale & Purchase Agreement with Resolute Mining Ltd to acquire a significant land position in Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa.
The deal with Resolute and its wholly owned subsidiary Toro Gold Ltd is for the acquisition of the shares in two subsidiaries, resulting in the acquisition of 100% of the Resolute’s exploration interests in Cote d’Ivoire.
The Resolute interests in Cote d’Ivoire include a 76.5% interest in a joint venture with Predictive Discovery Ltd, a 100% interest in various exploration permits and applications and an extensive amount of exploration equipment.
In addition, Manas has entered into a Share Sale Agreement with Predictive to acquire 12.5% of Predictive’s current 23.5% interest in the Resolute-Predictive Joint Venture company, such that Manas will hold an 89% interest in this joint venture upon completion. Manas and Predictive have entered into a new joint venture agreement whereby Manas will have management and decision-making authority over the joint venture and Predictive’s 11% interest will be free carried to ‘Decision to Mine’ and grant of a mining permit. A Decision to Mine may be made by majority decision.
Manas’ and Predictive’s interests in the mining joint venture company will be diluted pro-rata to account for any Cote d’Ivoire government interest. If Predictive’s interest falls below 10% in the mining joint venture company, its interest will convert to a 1.0% net smelter royalty (‘NSR’) and disposes of its interest to Manas at that time. Both the Predictive Sale Agreement and Manas-Predictive Joint Venture Agreement are conditional upon completion under the Resolute Sale Agreement.
Both Resolute and Predictive have waived mutual pre-emptive rights over the other parties’ interest in the Resolute-Predictive Joint Venture.
The granted permits under the Acquisition cover a combined area of 3,849 sq. km and will increase Manas’ granted ground position in Cote d’Ivoire to 4,880 sq. km. A further 2,346 sq. km of exploration permit applications are included in the Acquisition, which when combined with Manas’ existing exploration applications, increases Manas’ total ground position to 8,400 sq. km.
Assuming completion of the Acquisition, Manas’ exploration focus will be concentrated on the three most advanced and highly prospective projects in northern Cote d’Ivoire, an area where Manas’ management has demonstrated exploration success with the discovery of the Bagoe (Antoinette) deposits by Exore Resources Ltd (acquired by Perseus in September 2020 for ~A$80m).
These projects are:
- Boundiali Gold Project| JORC Resource delineation and step-out drilling on the large-scale >6km ‘Nyangboue’ discovery;
- Ferke Gold Project| step-out on the ‘Ouarigue South’ discovery and first pass drilling on other targets along the >16km ‘Leraba Gold Trend’; and
- Tongon North Gold Project | mapping, geochemical sampling, auger and aircore drilling across several large untested gold-in-soils anomalies across a consolidated 1,840 sq. km ground position
In addition, Manas will continue to explore its Eburnea Gold Project in central Cote d’Ivoire (refer Figure One) where previous regional soil sampling by Manas identified several large-scale, untested gold-in-soil anomalies.
Manas is currently undertaking an infill soil sampling program at the Eburnea Gold Project to better define the more coherent soil anomalies to allow for auger drill testing.
Manas will undertake low-cost reconnaissance exploration across the remaining granted exploration portfolio to determine the most appropriate approach to these remaining projects to maximise shareholder value from this large and exciting ground position.
