Austral Resources will add the Lady Loretta mining lease to its growing portfolio of assets in north-western Queensland.
The copper producer has entered into a non-binding memorandum of understanding to acquire the lease and associated exploration permits from subsidiaries of Glencore.
The deal will enable Austral to extract additional copper resources from its existing Lady Annie tenement, which borders the Lady Loretta lease. Glencore will continue the underground zinc operations at Lady Loretta until its planned closure in December this year.
Austral chairman David Newling said the company was “extremely excited” with the acquisition.
“Lady Loretta is an eminently sensible acquisition for us, given its tenements and ours abut, and that it enables a meaningful extension of copper mining from our Lady Annie deposit, which will support production from our Mt Kelly processing facility,” he said.
Ore mined from the expanded Lady Annie project will continue to be processed at the Mt Kelly solvent extraction and electrowinning processing plant.
The company did not provide details on the purchase price of the acquisition, or any funding arrangements, but said this would follow the execution of binding documentation “in the coming weeks”.
The deal is in line with Austral’s regional consolidation and growth strategy, which aims to establish a copper sulphide processing hub in the Eastern Isa region of Queensland. It follows on from Austral’s $18 million acquisition of the Rocklands copper mine earlier this month.
Subscribe to Australian Mining and receive the latest news on product announcements, industry developments, commodities and more.
