Metal Tiger PLC (AIM:MTR, OTC:MRTTF, ASX:MTR) has noted announcements from two of its investee companies, Southern Gold Limited and Sandfire Resources Limited.
Southern Gold has outlined preliminary plans to broaden exploration efforts in South Korea to include the search for copper, lithium and rare earth element (REE) deposits while remaining focussed on its precious metals exploration program heading into 2023.
In a statement, Southern Gold MD and CEO Robert Smillie said: “After living in South Korea for the last 12 months and travelling extensively around the country, it is readily apparent that there are significant opportunities to broaden our gold-silver exploration portfolio to include other metals such as copper, lithium and REE. Several of our new projects in the east of the country already contain good copper grades, as reported recently from our Goseong and Geoje Island Projects. South Korea has small-scale, historic lithium mines and known occurrences of REEs, however there has been little to no modern-day exploration for these 'critical minerals'."
“The RSC Prospectivity Study commissioned by SAU has really highlighted the opportunity for the Company to explore for lithium and REE deposits here in South Korea, and where to best focus our initial efforts. The South Korean government keenly wishes to develop new domestic supplies of critical minerals to diversify supplies, and the SAU team and I are in discussions with mandated government agencies with the aim of working together in the search for critical minerals in South Korea.
“Going forward, our epithermal gold-silver program will continue to be our primary focus as we move to drill testing a number of priority projects in 2023, and we intend to leverage our first-mover advantage and incountry capability to explore for these critical metals to create additional value for our shareholders and support government efforts," Smillie added.
Metal Tiger is interested in 40,794,000 Southern Gold shares, representing approximately 19.1% of Southern Gold’s issued share capital, and 7,284,500 2-year A$0.18 warrants.
Sandfire says recent and ongoing drilling at the A1 prospect "encouraging"
Meanwhile, Sandfire has announced encouraging copper-silver (Cu-Ag) assay results from recent and ongoing drilling at the A1 prospect, located 20 kilometres (km) northeast of the company’s Motheo Copper Mine in the Kalahari Copper Belt (KCB) of Botswana.
Richard Holmes Sandfire’s Executive, Growth said: “Our dominant land position in the Kalahari Copper-belt is beginning to demonstrate its pedigree with the discovery of the A1 mineral system. Our patient approach to exploration, with the collection of regional scale datasets and their integration into a holistic exploration model, is delivering positive results.
“While the A1 system is still emerging and more drilling is required to understand its potential, it’s pleasing to have success so close to our existing infrastructure, with the Motheo Copper Mine only 20km away. Our current project generation work is delivering a pipeline of targets within sight of the headframe, which we will be testing over the coming months.”
In addition, Sandfire has published its September 2022 Quarterly Report and September 2022 Quarterly Report Presentation.
Metal Tiger is interested in 7,036,953 Sandfire shares representing approximately 1.72% of Sandfire’s issued share capital. As previously announced, 2,842,667 of the Sandfire shares held by the company are subject to an equity derivative financing arrangement with a global investment bank,