ASX-listed PolarX has secured significantly improved terms on its option to acquire an 80 per cent interest in the Alaskan Caribou Dome copper deposit and a 90 per cent interest in the adjacent Senator property. The company has negotiated a three-year extension to the life of the deal allowing payments to be spread over a four-year period and reduced its overall expenditure commitment by US$400,000.
PolarX said the revision to the option agreement includes a one-off cash payment of US$75,000 on execution of the option amendments and subsequent option payments of US$100,000 on each anniversary, being 6 June next year, in 2022 and in 2023. A final cash payment of US$1.26 million on the earn-in deadline, will be due 6 June 2024.
On top of the list of ongoing cash payments totalling US$1.56 million, PolarX said it was committed to an annual expenditure of US$400,000 over each of the next four years, totalling US$1.6m, down from the original US$2m agreed previously.
The company must also make payment to certain underlying vendors of $12,500 worth of shares in the company on execution of the option amendment and another $12,500 in shares on each anniversary while the option agreement remains in effect.
PolarX currently operates the Caribou Dome and Stellar projects under the overall banner of its Alaska Range Project which covers a contiguous lease package of some 262 square kilometres, approximately 250kms northeast of Anchorage.
The Caribou Dome copper deposit lies to the south-west and Zackly and Stellar to the north-east, within a 35km strike area of the fairway containing a bevy of extensive copper-in-soil and gold-in-soil anomalies along its length.
The company tabled a total mineral resource for the Caribou Dome deposit back in 2017, with 2.8Mt ranging between 2.2 to 3.6 per cent copper, for a total resource of 85,800 tonnes of contained copper.
The total measured, indicated and inferred mineral resource for the entire Alaska Range project currently stands at 127,000t of contained copper, 213,000oz of contained gold and 1.5Moz of contained silver, with the precious metals piece hosted in the Zackly deposit.
Whilst the resource estimate for the company’s 100 per cent-owned Zackly copper-gold-silver deposit hit the streets back in March 2018, PolarX has had other successful drill hits since. Once assays from its most recent drill campaign are back from the lab, investors will be looking for an updated gold resource in the new year.
PolarX first put its foot on the Caribou Dome option back in February 2015 and spent the next two years meeting its work obligations and annual payments. The work included dredging through a pile of historical data covering the deposit which was originally discovered back in 1963.
With a maiden resource on the street and more time to work up the deposit, PolarX will be looking to investigate the commercial viability of trucking copper ore from Caribou Dome to potential processing sites at its wholly-owned Zackly copper-gold deposit.
With copper in high demand globally and Alaska’s Denali highway just 20km from the project area, it could be only a matter of time before PolarX gets the herd moving at Caribou Dome.
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