- Myanmar Metals (MYL) has exercised its option to acquire a 51 per cent stake in Locrian Precious Metals
- The company has the right to earn up to 85 per cent in the business, under an agreement signed last year
- Locrian’s assets include the highly prospective Tarlay site, which was recently granted an exploration licence
- Exploration at Tarley has been delayed due to COVID-19 restrictions, but is expected to resume once the wet season concludes in October
- Shares in MYL are trading down 4.76 per cent at 10 cents each
Exploration company Myanmar Metals (MYL) has officially exercised its option to acquire a 51 per cent stake in Locrian Precious Metals.
Myanmar has been eyeing off buying a majority stake, up to 85 per cent, in the company since last year when the deal was first agreed upon.
It announced today that the Board of Myanmar Metals has elected to exercise the Locrian option and has issued an Exercise Notice to the vendor.
“The Locrian acquisition provides the Company with a significant gold and copper exploration opportunity which complements Bawdwin’s development phase and offsets operational risk,” Company CEO John Lamb said.
“We have now established our position with granted tenure in one of Asia’s most exciting gold districts. In due course, we will undertake the first systematic exploration program the Tarlay Gold Belt has ever seen,” he added.
Myanmar is interested in Locrian because of its projects in Myanmar, which is a key area of interest for the exploration company.
Locrian’s two assets both reside in East Shan State and include the Tarlay site, which was recently granted an exploration licence, and the Mongywang application.
Reconnaissance sampling at Tarlay, which occurred earlier this year, showed 20 per cent of the 29 rock chip samples returned anomalous gold assays greater than 0.1 grams per tonne.
While Locrian’s 2016 channel sampling in small-scale mines adjacent to Tarlay returned an assay result of 51.4 grams per tonne of gold over 9 metres, including 1 metre at 334 grams per tonne of gold and 7.0 grams per tonne of gold over 12 metres.
Myanmar plans to resume the reconnaissance sampling program in October once the wet season subsides after it was paused in April due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.
It’s also planned a series of exploration works, including drilling of identified targets, over the next year at Tarlay.
Shares in MYL are trading down 4.76 per cent at 10 cents each at 3.13 pm AEST.