Everest Metals has completed a swag of deals to formally acquire 51 per cent of the Mt Edon lithium project and the Revere gold project.
The package includes joint ventures across both projects with the privately-owned Entelechy Resources, along with farms-in deals and royalty agreements. The arrangements allow Everest to move towards 100 per cent ownership.
Everest Metals chief operating officer Simon Phillips said: “We are delighted to have both the Revere JV and Mt Edon JV reach completion taking EMC to 51 per cent ownership of the projects. The Mt Edon LCT Pegmatite Project has an extensive array of pegmatite outcrops and EMC looks forward to providing further details on the drilling program scheduled Q2, 2023 at this highly fertile field. The Revere Gold Project is an advanced asset with significant gold and copper potential, both at surface and at depth.”
In order to complete the farm in deal Everest will pay $25,000 cash for the reimbursement of past expenditure. The company will also issue Entelechy with 23 million ordinary full paid shares and will grant its JV partner a one per cent gross overriding royalty on the value of all minerals produced and sold from the tenement.
In March, Everest tabled exceptional gold recoveries from independent gravity separation metallurgical testwork at its Revere gold project, 90km north-east of WA’s Mid West town of Meekatharra. Coarse gold hand-picked from the 41kg bulk quartz vein sample accounted for 47 per cent of the recovered gold. The bulk quartz sample had a head grade of 305 grams per tonne gold and gravity separation recovered 97 per cent of the remaining precious metal.
On the back of the results, Everest is now planning to construct a low-cost crushing, grinding and gravity-separation processing facility at Revere, pending similar results from an already permitted 36,000 tonne bulk sample and further drilling.
The Revere project sits on 82 square kilometres of tenements some 50km north-east of the Andy Well gold mine, which has produced more than 100,000 ounces of gold per annum and has a current resource of 505,000 ounces of gold at a grade of 8.6g/t.
Further north-east from Revere is the famously rich DeGrussa copper mine and 10-million-ounce Plutonic gold endowment. Plutonic has produced a total of 60,000 ounces of gold a year over six years for 357,000 ounces of total production. Catalyst’s Trident deposit further along trend has a resource of 540,000 ounces at 8g/t gold.
The nearby DeGrussa copper deposit was a company-maker for Sandfire Resources and Everest will be hoping something similar is lurking at Revere. The company said shallow drilling at the project had also shown strong copper potential at depth.
Having once played a central role in the 1890s gold rush, Everest’s Mt Edon project is now the focus of a new craze due to its lithium potential. With Mt Edon just 5km from the Paynes Find greenstone belt, Everest is targeting new lithium-ceasium-tantalium pegmatite deposits in the highly fertile ground.
Previous mapping has outlined some 350m of north-east/south-west strike through a 1.2km corridor, giving on-site geologists plenty of new rocky outcrops to explore.
In addition to the mapping, Everest is now kicking off with a form of geophysics known as “deep ground penetration radar” to look for potential subsurface pegmatite pods hosted in the main structure.
Deep ground penetrating radar uses pulses to define the subsurface to depths of up to 100m. It is considered to be environmentally-friendly and cost-effective and offers high resolution images. The form of geophysics is ideal given LCT pegmatites are renowned for their shallow mineralisation which can extend for several kilometres.
With the latest paperwork out of the way, Everest already has its hands full with planning a diamond drill program for the June quarter. It is aiming to launch the campaign after analysing the results from its deep ground penetrating radar program.
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By Steve Kaless
