Newcrest takes the wheel of Antipa’s Wilki Farm-in Project

Antipa is handing the reins of the Wilki gold project over to Newcrest, after the major completed its initial commitment of $6m in exploration expenditure.

The exploration spend ticks off the first step in Newcrest’s farm-in to the project, which could see the gold miner earn up to 75% in Wilki from Antipa Minerals (ASX:AZY).

Newcrest Mining’s (ASX:NCM) management of the project will take effect from 1 July 2022, and it will now have to spend a further $10m on exploration by March 2025 to earn a 51% interest in Wilki (Antipa currently holds 100% of the project).

Should this milestone be reached, Newcrest will be on the hook for a further $44m by March 2028 to increase its stake up to 75%.

“Newcrest’s decision to assume operatorship of our Wilki Farm-in Project from July is perfect timing,” Antipa Managing Director Roger Mason says.

“With our other major partners Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) and IGO (ASX:IGO) already operating our Citadel JV and Paterson Farm-in Projects, respectively, this allows Antipa to dedicate its focus to the rapid advancement of our 100%-owned Minyari Dome Project.”

Resources at Minyari were recently upgraded to 1.8Moz of gold, which Mason says is why the company is now targeting a standalone mining and processing operation.

“Running in parallel, our major partners will be funding significant greenfield discovery exploration programmes on 5,000km² of world-class Paterson Province ground,” he added.

Keeping things local

Wilki surrounds Newcrest’s long-running Telfer gold-copper-silver mine and is just 9km from the Newcrest-Greatland Gold’s Havieron high-grade gold-copper development project.

Wilki hosts existing resources of 63,200oz and 40,400oz of gold at the Tim’s Dome and Chicken Ranch deposits.

Results are currently pending for a small part of the 2021 drill program while planning is underway for drilling this year that will test priority targets with similar characteristics to Havieron.

EIS co-funded drilling of priority target Tetris with similar characteristics to Havieron about 40km northeast from the Minyari WACA deposits will also be carried out, likely along with further drilling, a 740km² aeromagnetic survey, reprocessing of AEM data, as well as soil geochemical and ground geophysics surveys.

This article was developed in collaboration with Antipa 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.