ECR Minerals plc (AIM: ECR) has executed binding conditional farm-in and joint venture agreements with Bold Gold Resources, providing a pathway for up to A$3 million of third-party exploration investment at its Creswick Gold Project in Victoria, Australia.
Under the staged earn-in agreement, Bold Gold will initially commit at least A$250,000 during the first 12 months. It can subsequently earn a 51% interest in Creswick by taking its total exploration expenditure to A$1.25 million.
Bold Gold can then increase its ownership to 80% by funding a further A$1.75 million, taking total potential expenditure to A$3 million. Under certain licence-related circumstances, the final expenditure requirement could fall to A$2.75 million.
Importantly, Bold Gold will not earn any project interest until it has spent at least A$1.25 million.
The agreement remains conditional on renewal of exploration licences EL006907 and EL006184, which expire this year. Bold Gold will cover reasonable third-party costs associated with securing the renewals.
Creswick lies approximately 20 kilometres north of Ballarat within the Victorian goldfields and contains a significant portion of the 15-kilometre Dimocks Main Shale gold-bearing structure. Previous ECR drilling has intersected mineralisation exceeding 20 grams per tonne gold, although only a limited proportion of the wider target corridor has undergone systematic modern exploration.
For ECR, the deal provides a mechanism to advance Creswick using external capital while preserving its own resources for projects elsewhere in Australia, particularly the Maddens and Blue Mountain projects in Queensland.
Chairman Nick Tulloch said the arrangement could deliver substantial exploration activity at Creswick without adding funding pressure to ECR, while allowing the company to retain exposure to future discoveries through its remaining project interest and potential royalty rights.
