Accelerate raises $1.7m to drive exploration at promising new Canadian gold project

Accelerate Resources (ASX:AX8) has raised $1.7m through a placement of shares to advance exploration and drilling at the newly acquired Rossland gold project in British Columbia, Canada.

The project surrounds the historical high-grade Le Roi mines, which produced more than 2.7 million ounces of gold at 13.3 grams per tonne (g/t) along with 3.53 million ounces of silver and 71 tonnes of copper between 1894 and 1941.

They were the birthplace of Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (COMINCO) that was bought out by Canada’s largest diversified resources company, Teck, in 2001.

While the project area has remained underexplored since the mine closed, multiple extensions to mined high-grade structures that trend into the project area have been identified.

Accelerate noted the recent consolidation of this tenure position offered the opportunity to properly test these strike extensions for the first time.

These include the Gertrude prospect where limited historical drilling returned results such as 6.1m at 13.29g/t gold from a depth of 162m, 4.5m at 12.7g/t gold from 164m and 1.5m at 17.18g/t gold from 151m.

Other top priority targets are the Eleanor prospect, where surface rock chip sampling returned grades of up to 130.5g/t gold, and the Mascot prospect that hosts the historical Columbia-Kootenay mine, which produced 68,520oz of gold at 475g/t.

Rossland has extensive infrastructure that provides year-round access and there are three processing options within 80km.

Non-executive chairman Grant Mooney said yesterday Rossland represented a highly leveraged, low-cost opportunity to acquire an advanced high-grade exploration play.

“With early success, this could rapidly evolve into a development proposition in a low-risk jurisdiction with significant surrounding infrastructure and major gold players,” he added.

“Importantly we are able to tap into an established, high-calibre technical and support team that is ready to mobilise to drill a series of high-impact targets over the next six to eight months with significant ongoing news flow.”

Gold project acquisition terms

Accelerate will provide vendor Currie Rose Resources with $C500,000 ($520,000) to fund a due diligence program on Rossland that is to be completed within eight months and can be extended for two months by providing a further $C50,000 in funding.

Should Accelerate decide to proceed with the farm-in, it can acquire an initial 51 per cent interest in the project by issuing 12.5 million shares and paying $C200,000 in cash to Currie Rose.

It can earn the remaining 49 per cent by incurring $C1m in exploration expenditure within 14 months along with issuing 25 million shares and 15 million performance rights to Currie Rose and paying the vendor $C250,000 in cash.

Placement terms

The company has received firm commitments for the $1.7m placement through the issue of 34 million shares priced at 5c each to sophisticated investors.

This will be carried out in two tranches, with the first 24.6 million shares to be issued under its existing placement capacity and the placement of the remaining shares subject to shareholder approval.

Accelerate intends to issue the first tranche of shares on or about September 11 and plans to hold a shareholder meeting in October to seek approval for the second tranche.