Acquisition of Copper Assets & Issue of Equity

RNS Number : 5420N

Galileo Resources PLC

21 May 2020

 

For immediate release

Dissemination of a Regulatory Announcement that contains inside information according to REGULATION (EU) No 596/2014 (MAR).

21 May 2020

Galileo Resources Plc

("Galileo" or "the Company")

Acquisition of Copper Exploration Assets in Botswana

Issue of Equity

Galileo Resources plc ("Galileo "or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has completed the acquisition  of 100% of Botswana- incorporated Crocus-Serv (Pty) Ltd  ("Crocus") (the "Acquisition"), having satisfied the Conditions Precedent in terms of the Heads of Agreement  ("HoA")  (as announced 7 May 2020 -RNS number  3266M).  Crocus's assets include 21 exploration prospecting licences (PLs) of which  19  are in the highly prospective  Kalahari  Copper Belt (KCB) and 2 are in  the  Limpopo Mobile Belt (LMB) in the western and north eastern  Botswana respectively. The PLs cover a total 14,875 square kilometres

In terms of the  HoA, the Company has issued as consideration a total 38,814,246 new Galileo ordinary shares of 0. 1p at 0.42p each to Crocus (the Consideration Shares) and will make a cash payment of £10,828 (Vendor Cash Consideration). The Consideration Shares are subject to Orderly Market arrangements as set out in the 7 May announcement. The Company has applied for the Consideration Shares to be admitted to trading, expected on or around 28 May 2020 on AIM. 

Furthermore, the Company confirms that it has also issued a total of 26,505,000 fully paid ordinary shares in the Company (the "New Ordinary Shares") pursuant to the exercise of warrants in terms of the Placing Agreement dated 17 October 2019 (RNS announced 18 October 2019). Application will be made for admission of the above Consideration and New Ordinary Shares (collectively "New Shares") to trading on AIM ("Admission"), with Admission expected to occur on around 28 May 2020.

Following the issue of the above Consideration Shares and New Shares, which rank pari passu to the existing ordinary shares in the Company, the Company has 623,131,193  ordinary shares in issue, all of which have voting rights. Shareholders in the Company may use this figure as the denominator for the calculation, by which they would determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the Financial Conduct Authority's Disclosure and Transparency Rules.

Colin Bird CEO said:" We are pleased to have completed this acquisition of  Crocus with its copper- licences in the highly prospective Kalahari Copper Belt and nickel-copper-platinum group metal  licences in the Limpopo Mobile belt in Botswana. The Galileo team look forward  to commencing exploration on the properties with  the complementary benefit of Crocus's in-country experience in technical and regulatory administrative matters" . 

Acquisition Prospectivity  

In the Kalahari Copper Belt ('KCB'), the Agreement covers 19 prospecting licences ('PLs') extending over 14,564km² located approximately 500km to the northwest of Gaborone, the capital of Botswana. The KCB extends for over 800km of strike and contains multiple recent copper-silver discoveries, which are generally stratabound and hosted in metasedimentary rocks. The geological setting is comparable to that of the Central African Copper Belt and the Kupferschiefer in Poland.

Among recent discoveries in the KCB are Cupric Canyon Capital's ('Cupric') Khoemacau-Boseto Project (91.7 million tonnes @ 2.13% Cu and 21.9g/t Ag) which is currently being prepared for development, Sandfire Resources ('Sandfire') T3 deposit (36.0 Mt @ 1.14% Cu & 12.8g/t Ag), where an optimised feasibility study is in progress and their A4 Dome prospect where a recent drill intercept of 18m at 5.2% Cu and 124g/t Ag was reported. Further discoveries have been made across the border in Namibia.

The deposits in the belt are generally blanketed by Kalahari sands, ranging from 2-60m in thicknesses which have kept them hidden from discovery until recent times. 

PL's included in the Galileo package are interpreted to cover a strike length of more than 200km of favourable geology with multiple targets. Some of the PLs previously formed part of the MOD Resources (now Sandfire) and Cupric's landholding and therefore have had limited historical exploration. The remainder of the ground represents more-or-less blue-sky exploration territory within the belt.

Several of the PLs  lie within 15km of Sandfire's T3 deposit and A4 Dome (Tshukudu) discovery, as well as Cupric's Banana Zone (155Mt @ 0.9% Cu, 11g/t Ag) and the Mahumo deposit (2.7Mt @ 2.0% Cu, 50g/t Ag).

Galileo plans to review the limited historic exploration information and to focus on the base of the prospective Proterozoic D'Kar Formation in fold hinge settings. Follow-up is envisaged to encompass acquisition of available airborne magnetic data, ground geophysical surveying, including detailed magnetics and EM, along with soil geochemistry, with initial targeting close to known copper-silver discoveries.

The Limpopo Mobile Belt ('LMB') project comprises 2 PLs covering 311km² on land located about 400km northeast of Gaborone, near the border with Zimbabwe, viz. PL048/2018 (Sampowane) and PL049/2018.

The LMB is a wide zone of continental collision traversing parts of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The Galileo licences are located along the northern margin of the LMB within Botswana. The underlying geology comprises a sheared package of metamorphic gneisses of Archaean age enclosing mafic-ultramafic intrusive rocks. These intrusives are prospective primarily for nickel and copper massive sulphides.

Along this section of  the LMB, Botswana Metals Ltd. ('Botswana Metals') operated the major Selebi Phikwe Ni-Cu mine, with reported original resources of 150Mt @ 1% Ni, 0.9% Cu. In addition, several smaller deposits have been discovered and are currently being explored along this sector of the LMB, some of which also contain significant concentrations of platinum group elements.

The Sampowane licence is located only 15km from the Selebi Phikwe mine. Historic exploration on the property comprised mainly EM (electro-magnetic)  geophysics and limited RC/diamond drilling by Falconbridge and Botswana Metals. This defined an EM target that extends for over 1km. Several drill holes along this target are reported to have intersected a narrow zone of Ni-Cu mineralisation, with the best drill intercept assaying 0.47% Ni, 0.20% Cu, 0.43g/t Pd over 4.0m. A number of further mafic/ultramafic occurrences on the property returned anomalous copper values from grab samples but these have not yet been tested.

PL049/2018  lies further to the east within an area where many Ni-Cu prospects have been discovered, several immediately adjacent to the property. Extensive historic exploration over the district, most recently by Botswana Metals, highlighted a series of EM conductors along a 40km trend aligned east-northeast. Several of these conductors were followed up with drilling, which located Ni-Cu-PGE deposits at a number of localities, including some very proximal close to PL049. The Maibele North project, which lies less than 1km to the north of PL049/2018, hosts a(JORC 2012) Resource of 2.38 million tonnes at 0.72% nickel, 0.21% copper and 0.63g/t PGE's, plus gold, with potential for further extensions. In addition, the Dibete Prospect, which is surrounded by the PL049, was extensively drilled by Botswana Metals with intercepts up to 11m @ 4.5% Cu, 229g/t Ag and 17m @ 2.7% Cu, 41g/t Ag reported from cross-cutting structures.

No drilling is known on PL049but EM images show similar conductive features tracking through the licence which are untested and can have potential for massive sulphide mineralisation. These will be priority targets for follow-up by Galileo, utilising geological mapping/prospecting, soil geochemistry, ground geophysical surveying and drilling.

Technical Sign-Off

Andrew Sarosi, Technical Director of Galileo, holds a B.Sc. Metallurgy and M.Sc. Engineering, University of Witwatersrand and is a member of The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. He is a 'qualified person' as defined under the AIM Rules for Companies and a competent person under the reporting standards. The technical parts of this announcement have been prepared under Andrew Sarosi's supervision and he has approved the release of this announcement.

You can also follow Galileo on Twitter: @GalileoResource

For further information, please contact: Galileo Resources PLC

Colin Bird, Chairman Andrew Sarosi, Executive Director	Tel [phone] Tel [phone]
Beaumont Cornish Limited - Nomad Roland Cornish/James Biddle	Tel [phone]
Novum Securities Limited - Joint Broker Colin Rowbury /Jon Belliss	[phone]
Shard Capital Partners LLP - J oint Broker Damon Heath	Tel [phone]

 

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