Redcastle Resources’ (ASX:RC1) Western Australia-based Queen Alexandra gold project has been given a significant step up on Wednesday after it expanded its project envelope by 600% as part of a JV deal with BML Ventures.
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BML Ventures will fund the entirety of CapEx “to first revenues” for Redcastle’s Queen Alexandra (QA) and Redcastle Reef (RR) deposits, respectively. According to RC1 on Wednesday, BML will undertake haulage and toll treatment, as well as regulatory approvals and on-site mining proper.
Redcastle, for its part, will pick up BML’s ‘TBone Belt’ package, a 72sq.km landholding adjacent to RC1’s acreage, bringing its entire scale to around 85sq.km.
As part of TBone Belt, RC1 and BML Ventures now stand poised to exploit four existing granted leases. Another five remain in the pipeline, too, and there’s no less than 51 prospecting stakes issued over the area.
Underpinning all of this is a $1.5 million injection of cash from BML Ventures in an August placement subscription, part of a larger $4M two-tranche placement at 0.9cps. Shares in the nanocap jumped by more than +60% in the second hour of trades, suggesting investor conviction in the stock.
Producer status name of the game
But the bigger prize here than the JV itself is the potential fast-track to gold producer status for RC1. RC1 management was equally bullish on Wednesday. That’s because through all of these advancements, Redcastle has its eye on one particular prize: A fast-track to gold producer.
“The Joint Venture with BML provides a disciplined, capital-efficient pathway for first gold production,” RC1 chairman Dr. Ray Shaw suggested, noting immediate access to 48 concessions across TBone.
And those concessions have recently come out from underneath a complicated ownership web now de-tangled.
“Concessions previously held by six separate entities adjacent to the tenements where our technical team have already demonstrated success with the QA and RR [deposits],” Shaw said.
“Taken together, this announcement highlights three major milestones for the Company, and over the coming weeks and months, we will progressively release further technical information on the TBone concessions as our work is advanced, ensuring the market is kept fully and transparently informed.”
Who is BML Ventures Pty Ltd?
The JV partner – not related to Boab Metals, for those playing at home – is a privately held WA-based mining outfit long focused on the prolific WA Goldfields.
Perhaps most interesting is BML specialises in open-pit operations and reports a track record of turning small projects into producing assets.
The company formerly oversaw the ‘Trouser Legs’ project in the Eastern Goldfields, also where RC1’s QA and RR deposits are located, and has been involved in another four exploration plays across WA.
BML, according to its website, most recently helped develop Kingswest’s Selkirk Deposit, part of the latter’s Menzies Gold Project.
Here, then, a look at Redcastle’s Queen Alexandra deposit – part of its larger eponymous project – could offer context to what BML Ventures’ participation may look like.
RC1’s assets familiar terrain for BML
Located in the Eastern Goldfields, Redcastle’s now-expanded flagship is located 62km east of Leonora and accessible via sealed roads. Other producing assets are nearby.
Areas within Redcastle’s boundary envelope have formerly been the purview of Hill Minerals in the 1980s and then Terrain Minerals, whereafter things have been relatively quiet since the late 2000s.
That’s in no small part because the company’s acreage straddles the Archaean-era Norseman to Wiluna greenstone belt, a well-studied geological formation that has hosted a number of producing assets across its extent.
“Very commonly gold mineralisation is controlled by shear zones, with mineral alteration such as chlorite, sericite, pyrite, and quartz veining,” Redcastle reports of its project boundary.
“These zones can have dips of any angle, but are commonly steep. The most famous of the mineralised structures at Redcastle is the Redcastle Reef. This is a gently curved structure occurring along the axial plane of a near east-west fold that has an extensive strike length.”
Much potential remains – according to Recastle, previous drilling has generally maxed out at around 50m depth, and a reinvigorated, modern drilling campaign has long been the company’s focus on-site.
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