Jadar and Redstone hit precious metals acquisitions trail

Silver-focused merger and acquisition (M&A) activity is heating up as prices continue to trade around seven-year highs.

Jadar Resources (ASX:JDR) could add to its diversified metals portfolio through the acquisition of a mothballed Queensland silver mine from defunct Moreton Resources’ (ASX:MRV) which ostensibly comes with 20Moz of contained silver.

Moreton’s Granite Belt tenement portfolio comprises five exploration tenements, one mining lease, and an in-situ crushing, screening, stacking and refining facility in the Silver Spur Basin in Southern Queensland.

Included in the tenements is the Granite Belt silver project which contains an estimated total JORC mineral resource of 12.1 million tonnes at 53 grams per tonne silver for 20.3 million ounces of contained silver.

The Granite Belt tenement is located three hours south-west of Brisbane, in southeast Queensland, in a region called Texas-Stanthorpe.

Historic silver mining area

The area hosted mining from the 1890s, the most significant of which was the Silver Spur mine which produced 100,000 tonnes at 800 grams per tonne silver, 25 per cent zinc, and 13 per cent lead.

The Granite Belt silver mining operations of Moreton Resources are currently on care and maintenance, but have all relevant permits, equipment and inventory.

Three copper and silver exploration targets – Hornet, Harrier and Hawker – are also in the package of tenements for copper and silver.

All of the assets will transfer to Jadar once it has completed due diligence for the deal.

Jadar also holds the Yanamina gold project in Peru that has a maiden JORC resource estimate of 6.7 million tonnes at 1.2 grams per tonne gold, and 4.31 grams per tonne silver for 265,987 ounces of gold and 934,500 oz of silver.

Jadar Resources (ASX:JDR) share price chart

HanTails acquisition now unconditional for Redstone

Redstone Resources (ASX:RDS) said its agreement to farm-in an 80 per cent interest in the HanTails project, 10 km south of Kalgoorlie’s Super Pit in WA, is now unconditional.

The company is carrying out aircore drilling and sampling to establish average gold grade and endowment to JORC status.

HanTails is a historic large-scale gold mine tailings storage facility that lies adjacent to the Hannans South open pit gold mine, from the mine’s operations between 1986 and 2006.

The project is estimated to contain about 6.3 million cubic metres of gold tailings, but further testing and verification is required to establish the tailings gold grade.