Blina Minerals will take a 50% shareholding in unlisted Australian exploration company, Colour Minerals and will shortly commence exploration across a gold-copper project near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory.
The deal includes two exploration plays, the Barkly and Babbler projects, with the well-endowed region recognised for magnetite-hosted gold-copper mineralisation.
The company said that the Bluebird prospect is one of the highest-ranking exploration targets at the Barkly project, where shallow drilling previously defined a 600m long copper anomaly.
Blina’s top priority is to quickly wrap a mineral resource around the Bluebird prospect, following a planned drilling program of around 2,200 metres.
The Tennant Creek district is well-known for producing some of the region’s richest iron-oxide-copper-gold deposits, with companies such as Evolution Mining making a nice profit from its operations in the area.
Blina also has some healthy “nearology” going on at its Bluebird prospect, with direct geological analogies to the nearby Peko and Nobles Nob deposits, according to the company.
Peko is located 8km south-east of Tennant Creek and from 1934, historically produced 400,000 ounces of gold and 146,000 tonnes of copper.
Following the discovery of Nobles Nob in 1934, the gold mine produced a whopping 1.2 million ounces of gold. The mine is located 13km from Tennant Creek and in its heyday, which spanned some 50 years, it was known as one of Australia’s richest mines.
Not-for-profit, geological data repository, Mindat.org, said that some of the ore at Nobles Nob was so rich, that when hit with a hammer it would not fracture, but rather it would flatten out like soft gold.
The company said that the Bluebird prospect is open along strike with a current drill-defined length of about 120m and a width of about 20m. By comparison, the Peko deposit was mined to only 100m in length and the overall thickness was similar to Bluebird.
Blina also pointed to some impressive historical drilling intercepts from Bluebird, with one of the best results being 20m grading 8.17 g/t gold, 0.61% copper and 0.22% bismuth from 157m down-hole.
Another encouraging result showed a 25m intercept at 1.9% copper and 0.3 g/t gold from 69m down-hole.
Blina believes that Bluebird is largely a concealed deposit and therefore, appears to have been missed by previous explorers.
The project also comes gift wrapped with a high-quality set of geophysical imagery, which has allowed Blina Geologists to fingerprint the characteristic signature of Bluebird and identify similar geological features as new exploration targets within the Barkly project area.
Blina Chairman David Porter said:“We are excited to be a part of this significant and high-grade gold-copper project." ... "The acquisition of the Barkley project will enable to company to re-build itself and provide a platform from which (it) is able to drive shareholder return in the future”
The final transaction is subject to further due diligence by Blina and if successful the Perth based company is expected to kick-off drilling in the near future. Blina has committed to a $300,000 spend in the first phase of exploration.
Colour Minerals is owned by Kalgoorlie Mine Management and following the completion of the arrangements, Blina will acquire 50% of the issued capital in Colour by issuing Kalgoorlie Mine Management with just over $645,000 worth of Blina shares.
Kalgoorlie Mine Management will hold about 15% of Blina in addition to its remaining 50% stake in Colour Minerals post transaction and the parties have agreed to negotiate further with a view to Blina eventually increasing its stake in the project to 75%.
With a swathe of impressive historic results at these projects, it shouldn’t be too hard for Blina to create a touch of excitement courtesy of its first round of drilling results.
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