Carawine Resources (ASX:CWX) has brought in the proverbial 800 pound gorilla to help explore for base metals and gold at its Paterson project in WA.

Rio Tinto Exploration, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) is fronting up $200,000 in cash and subscribing for $300,000 worth of CWX shares.

The major will be required to spend $1m on exploration and complete at least 2000m of drilling within the first two years at the Baton and Red Dog tenements.

Carawine’s Paterson project is near world-class deposits such as Newcrest Mining’s (ASX:NCM) Telfer gold and copper mine and Metals X’s (ASX:MLX) Nifty copper mine.

Rio Tinto also has the right to earn a 70 per cent interest in the two tenements by spending at least $5.5m within six years and can increase this to 80 per cent by sole funding to a discovery milestone or completing a scoping study on any discovery.

“To have one of the world’s largest resources companies committing to significant expenditure on our Baton and Red Dog tenements is a strong endorsement of the prospectivity of the tenements,” Carawine managing director David Boyd said.

“RTX is actively exploring in the Paterson to complement their Winu discovery. They have the technical knowledge and resources to rapidly and systematically evaluate the numerous high priority targets at Baton and Red Dog, increasing the chances of a successful discovery.”

The company’s work to date has identified more than 20 high priority target areas covering a range of potential deposit types.

Read more:

Barry FitzGerald: Carawine eyes big-time porphyry potential at Hill 800
Carawine is chasing giants in Victoria and WA

 

In other ASX base metals news:

Auroch Minerals’ (ASX:AOU) maiden drilling program at its recently acquired Saints nickel project about 65km northwest of Kalgoorlie is off to a strong start with the first assays indicating the presence of a narrow but extremely high-grade zone of nickel sulphide mineralisation.

The first hole intersected 1.77m at 6.72 per cent nickel, 0.27 per cent copper and 0.13 per cent cobalt from a depth of 227.31m.

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