Rio Tinto has purchased Antipa Minerals’ stake in the Citadel joint venture (JV), expanding its footprint in the Paterson Province of Western Australia.
The Citadel JV covers 1200 square kilometres of tenure and comprises the Calibre and Magnum gold-copper-silver deposits, which have a total mineral resource estimate of 127 million tonnes containing 2.84 million ounces (moz) of gold at 0.71 grams per tonne (g/t), 173,000 tonnes of copper at 0.13 per cent, and 2.1moz of silver at 2.1g/t.
The Citadel JV was established in October 2015 when Antipa and Rio Tinto Exploration entered into a farm-in and JV agreement. Rio Tinto has since gained a 68 per cent interest in the project, with Antipa holding the balance.
Now, Antipa has agreed to sell its 32 per cent non-controlling interest in Citadel to Rio Tinto for $17 million, with the anticipated $23 million in proceeds to go towards advancing the nearby Minyari Dome gold-copper project.
“We are very pleased to have signed a binding term sheet with long-standing Citadel joint venture partner, Rio Tinto,” Antipa managing director Roger Mason said.
“The sale of our minority, non-controlling, interest in the Citadel project, which was a non-core asset for Antipa, liberates cash, providing an extremely solid financial foundation from which to accelerate the development of our flagship, wholly owned Minyari Dome project.”
Mason described Rio Tinto as the “natural buyer” for Antipa’s stake in Citadel, with the transaction positioning the gold and copper explorer to unlock Minyari Dome’s full potential.
“Our team is busy finalising an update to the existing Minyari deposit mineral resource including simultaneously preparing a maiden mineral resource for GEO-01,” Mason said. “Together, these deposits will form a basis for a revised Minyari Dome scoping study.
“We look forward to sharing the outcomes from these project advancement milestones in the coming weeks.”
The transaction is expected to be finalised by November.
Rio Tinto has also increased its shareholding in Sovereign Metals to 19.9 per cent.
Sovereign is the owner of the Kasiya rutile-graphite project in Malawi, east Africa. A pre-feasibility study released in September 2023 confirmed Kasiya’s potential to become one of the world’s largest and lowest cost producers of natural rutile and graphite.
Rio Tinto first invested $40.4 million in Sovereign to gain a 15 per cent shareholding in July 2023 to help advance Kasiya.
“The experience and expertise that Rio Tinto brings will truly set Kasiya apart as a potentially globally significant supply of two critical minerals and take us all a step closer to supply chain decarbonisation and achieving net-zero,” Sovereign chairman Ben Stoikovich said at the time.
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