PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Platina Resources has inked a conditional agreement to acquire the Challa gold project, in Western Australia.

Platina will acquire the project in exchange for 10-million shares and a 0.75% gross gold royalty is payable on any gold produced from the tenements.

The project includes two high quality exploration licence applications covering 293 km², and is located in-between the prolific Mt Magnet and Sandstone gold districts.

The Sandstone province has produced over 1.3-million ounces of gold from numerous underground and openpit mining operations while Mt Magnet produced over six-million ounces since discovery in 1891. The nearby Youanmi Gold Mine produced 670 000 oz of gold throughout its lifetime and is currently the focus of new resource drilling of high-grade gold lodes.

Platina MD Corey Nolan said he was excited to gain exposure to a world-class gold province at a very low entry cost.

“The Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia has been a prodigious gold producing province since the 19th century and home to many successful mining operations.

“Challa lies within an area defined by more than 50 gold occurrences, on a previously unrecognised gold trend, the Paynesville Gold Trend, which intersects and interacts with the Challa Shear, a classic Yilgarn Craton structural setting for plus-million-ounce gold deposits.”

He said that the tenements had not been the subject of any recent or modern exploration activities but that was about to change.

“Once the tenements are granted, Platina can quickly mobilise on site via an all-weather access road, and commence field activities which includes a low-cost rotary air blast (RAB) drilling programme to identify primary targets,” he said.

“A reconnaissance site visit to the northern end of the project area identified outcropping quartz veins that assayed 5.1 and 6.8 g/t gold from the rare basement geology exposed at surface. This vein trends to the north-west and disappears under thin transported cover.”