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- Acquisition of one of the highest-grade gold projects in Africa
Expands Shanta’s operating presence in East Africa
Shanta Gold Ltd (LON:SHG) is to purchase 100% of the shares of Acacia Exploration (Kenya) Ltd, the local Kenya subsidiary of Barrick Gold.
Barrick will become Shanta Gold’s fifth-largest shareholder with a 6.4% interest.
“Today’s acquisition adds 1.2 Moz at 12.6 g/t inferred NI 43-101 resource to Shanta’s gold inventory. Approx US$55 m of exploration spend including 221,000 metres of drilling has been spent by Acacia and previous owners.”
The project is believed to be the highest grade million ounce-plus project under development anywhere in Africa.
Shanta Gold agrees to acquire 100% of Barrick Gold’s Kenya assets. This includes one of the highest grade +1 million oz deposits in Africa pic.twitter.com/q9x4teP98h
— Shanta Gold (@shanta_gold) February 10, 2020
“The West Kenya acquisition is significant for Shanta Gold, creating an East African Gold-mining champion with realisable growth prospects and high asset quality across three attractive gold projects,” said Shanta chief executive Eric Zurrin.
“Shanta has successfully operated in East Africa for nearly 20 years and this acquisition is a natural extension in terms of geographic footprint, skillset, size and mining method. One of Shanta’s competitive advantages is being able to operate long hole open stoping operations more efficiently than its peers which lends itself well to the advancement of the West Kenya project.”
Shanta will pay US$7mln in cash for the assets, US$7.5mln in shares and a 2% royalty will stay with Barrick.
The firm awaits the required regulatory approvals from the Mining Authorities to the assignment of interests and the transfer of Prospecting Licences, approval of the Transaction by the Competition Authority of Kenya, and registration of the Company’s interest in the Project Licences by the Mining Authorities.
Closing is anticipated to take place around mid-2020.
In 2017, Acacia Mining announced that it had found an “inferred mineral resource” estimated to be 1.31 million ounces of gold at 12.1 grams per tonne at the company’s project on the Liranda Corridor in Western Kenya.
