(Sharecast News) - Galileo Resources has exercised its option to enter a joint venture and acquire a 51% interest in the Shinganda Copper-Gold Project in Zambia, it announced on Tuesday.
The AIM-traded firm said the decision followed its investment of more than $0.5m in direct exploration costs.
It said it had also intensified efforts to expedite the development of multiple copper-gold targets within the project area.
The board said the joint venture agreement granted Galileo the right to increase its equity stake in the project to between 65% and 85%, depending on the scale of any future discoveries.
As part of the joint venture, Galileo had committed to fully funding and managing additional drilling, metallurgical studies, and scoping assessments, ultimately leading to the completion of a feasibility study.
Recent exploration activities had identified four copper occurrences spanning a 3.5 kilometre stretch along the Gerhard Structural Trend.
The findings built upon the discoveries made last year, as reported on 18 January, with samples from the newly-identified occurrences submitted for copper and gold analysis.
Previous drilling efforts yielded promising results, including drill intercepts of up to 50.3 metres at 1.54% copper from a depth of 21m in SHDD002.
Furthermore, prospecting and exploration pitting revealed grab sample gold grades peaking at 33.90 grams, 20.16 grams and 8.54 grams of gold per tonne.
The primary objective of the 2023 programme was to rapidly identify several well-defined targets suitable for drill testing during the current dry season.
That, Galileo said, would involve integrating recent prospecting findings with structural interpretation derived from magnetic data processing and new soil sampling data.
"The 51% earn-in and formation of a joint venture demonstrates our commitment to the Shinganda copper-gold project," said chairman and chief executive officer Colin Bird.
"The more work that we do the more confident we become, and we are grateful for the previous work carried out by Vale which, while not advanced enough to define a mineral deposit, was pivotal in establishing our initial work programmes which have taken us to the current position.
"We remain open minded on the style of mineralisation, including the concept of a larger IOCG system or a series of localised hydrothermal centres, while not excluding a hybrid model."
Bird said the deepest drillhole to date was to about 150 metres vertical depth, adding that traditionally IOCG deposits are discovered deeper.
"Thus, our exploration will continue to target near surface discovery with the mid-term intent, if our drilling and studies warrant, of a deeper drilling programme to identify a potential IOCG system."
At 1031 BST, shares in Galileo Resources were up 0.97% at 0.99p.
Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.
Galileo Resourc (GLR)