Strategic Minerals exchanges contracts for Leigh Creek copper mine buy

SML exchanged the binding contracts with the mine's current operator and owner Resilience Mining Australia on Thursday.

Final settlement was expected within the month.

A JORC 2012 compliant mineral resource estimate had been undertaken by Resilience on the Lynda, Lorna Doone and Paltridge North deposits of Leigh Creek back in 2016.

The studied showed that a total resource of 3.61 million tonnes at 0.69% copper for 24,900 of copper metal formed the base of the project.

Managing director John Peters said: "I believe we have once again proven our ability to identify projects that can be rapidly developed to deliver returns to shareholders. We are already formulating our development plans for LCCM and see the project as having potential to deliver cash flows in 2019."

"The management and board are very much of the opinion that Leigh Creek is a project that will become a key asset in the SML portfolio and we are excited to get underway with development once the transaction is settled," he added.