With the growing importance of battery and critical minerals, Argent is throwing its hat into the ring with an agreement to acquire a copper-nickel-PGE-REE project in WA’s Gascoyne region.
The Copperhead project – consisting of eight exploration licences and one exploration licence application – is located in a region with obvious potential as proven by the Yangibana rare earth elements (REE) project that is currently under development and active players such as Quantum Minerals, Rio Tinto and Dreadnought Resources.
Despite this prospectivity, the Gascoyne remains underexplored, giving Argent Minerals (ASX:ARD) plenty of opportunity to flex its exploration muscle.
And the company has wasted no time in doing so with its desktop and detailed geophysics reviews over the Copperhead assets already defining extensive structural and geophysical targets with the potential to host copper, REE, lithium, nickel and platinum group elements (PGEs).
Total consideration for the acquisition of private company Copperhead Resources, which holds 100% of the project, will be the issue of 87 million ARD shares – representing 10.17% of the company’s post-issue capital.
“We are pleased to have completed the exciting acquisition of the Copperhead project in an emerging, strongly prospective, and underexplored Gascogne region in Western Australia,” managing director Pedro Kastellorizos said.
“The project represents a great opportunity for Argent Minerals and our shareholders as this area has the potential for major world-class mineral discoveries with ground confirmation of base metal mineralisation from surface and depth.”
He added that Copperhead complements the flagship Kempfield copper-lead-zinc-silver deposit and has the potential to yield several mineral discoveries over several commodities which are currently listed under the critical minerals list.
Copperhead project
Copperhead is located about 300km east-northeast of Carnarvon with access provided by the sealed North West Coastal Highway and gravel station tracks throughout the tenements.
Recent targets identified by the company include eight known copper prospects that have historically yielded high-grade surface rock chip samples which have returned grades between 0.3% and 14.2% copper.
Trenching at the Mt Palgrave copper-zinc prospect returned 13m at 3.35% copper in conjunction with a rotary airblast hole intersecting 8.7m at 2.44% copper from a down-hole depth of just 10.4m.
Meanwhile, geophysical work has defined 21 base metals and five REE targets over known mineralised trends, within favourable lithology and where anomalous responses are evident while potential structural stratiform copper-zinc mineralisation hosted within the Discovery Formation has been estimated over 84km in strike length.
Work has also uncovered a layered mafic with nickel-copper-PGE potential within the gabbro/dolerite lithology which has over 76km in strike length within the project areas.
Capital raising
In conjunction with the acquisition of Copperhead, Argent is looking to raise $3m through a placement of 200 million shares priced at 1.5c each to sophisticated or professional investors.
This includes the issue of one free-attaching option exercisable at 4c and expiring two years from issue for every two shares subscribed.
Proceeds will be used for exploration at Copperhead and its existing projects.
This article was developed in collaboration with Argent Minerals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.