Panther Metals acquires Dotted Lake property in Canada

The London-listed firm said Dotted Lake consists of 39 cells, around 20 kilometres north-northeast of the Barrick-owned Hemlo mine, which has produced more than 21 million ounces of gold over 30 years.

It said it agreed to pay the vendors a total cash consideration of CAD 20,000 for the 100% acquisition of the claims that make up the Dotted Lake exploration property.

Those claims were free of any underlying instruments or royalties, it added.

Gold prospects on the property included 23.3 grams of gold per tonne over 0.3 metres, and 9.02 grams of gold per tonne over 0.4 metres, from channel sampling.

Reconnaissance rock-chip grades of up to 16.95 grams of gold per tonne along a more-than-two kilometre long sulphidic shear-zone had been recorded, in addition to anomalous geochemistry along the zone for both gold and base-metals.

“The Hemlo area is synonymous with gold exploration and gold mining success over the last 40 years,” said chief executive officer Darren Hazelwood.

“For Panther Metals to be able to secure this property, on such favourable deal terms, represents outstanding value for the company and its shareholders.

“In our opinion, the presence of gold mineralisation at surface, an intriguing coincidence of geological and geophysical features, combined with no previous drilling across the project area, warrants further work.”

Darren Hazelwood said the company’s initial planned work programme in the autumn of 2020 would include soil geochemistry and geophysical data reprocessing, as it looked to build its understanding of the opportunity.

“Having the opportunity to work so close to one of the largest historically producing gold mines in North America brings an added level of excitement to the business as we head into a rapid development phase of the company.”

At 0913 BST, shares in Panther Metals were up 3.24% at 7.33p.