Haddington Resources, through its wholly owned subsidiary Haddington Gold, has signed a letter of intent for a JV with the exploration division of global mining house Rio Tinto (Rio Tinto Exploration - RTE) on its Wallace Project near Cloncurry in north west Queensland.
Haddington also said it would step up gold exploration at the Wallace Project in its own right, targeting 11 newly discovered gold arsenic anomalies with the potential to significantly increase the existing 53,000oz resource. Haddington Gold acquired the Wallace Project last year as a key ‘second front’ to diversify its focus in the tantalum industry.
The arrangement with RTE, which is subject to the parties entering a formal joint venture agreement, will target its exploration on five EPM’s within Haddington’s 386km2 tenement package. The tenements are in the North West Mineral Province. Major producers in the near vicinity include Xstrata’s Ernest Henry copper-gold mine and BHP Billiton’s Cannington zinc-lead-silver mine.
Haddington will continue to explore for gold at the Wallace South Gold Project, which will be excised from any JV area with Rio Tinto.
A number of promising target areas have been delineated on Haddington’s tenements by previous operators including BHP, Diversified Mineral Resources and Union Oil Development Company.
In addition to announcing the JV, Haddington also confirmed that it was confident of meeting its production target of 200,000 pounds of tantalite for the 2003/04 year from its Bald Hill operations after resolving operational difficulties.