Cascadero Copper Corporation has signed an Option and Joint Venture Exploration Agreement (the "Option Agreement") with Gold Fields Toodoggone Exploration Corporation ("Gold Fields"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Gold Fields Netherlands Services BV and a member of the Gold Fields Limited group of companies.
The Option Agreement grants Gold Fields an option to acquire a 51% interest in Cascadero's Toodoggone property to be satisfied by incurring expenditures of at least C$5 million over a three year period. If Gold Fields acquires the 51% interest, it has the option to acquire an additional 24% interest in the property which is to be satisfied by spending an additional $15 million or funding the completion of a feasibility study. Once Gold Fields has ceased its sole funding, Cascadero and Gold Fields will form a joint venture for the continued exploration and possible development of the property.
The Option Agreement also provides that Gold Fields, or one of its affiliates, will subscribe for 500,000 units of Cascadero at a price of $0.10 per unit, with each unit consisting of one share and one share purchase warrant. If Gold Fields continues with the Option Agreement it will invest a further $100,000 in Cascadero units on each of the first three anniversaries of the Option Agreement.
Cascadero will pay a finder's fee of $7,500 to an arm's length party. The Option Agreement is subject to TSX Venture approval.
The Cascadero Copper property consists of 72 converted new tenures, which aggregate approximately 30,000 hectares in the Toodoggone River region of north central British Columbia. This large contiguous claim group is about 15 kilometres north of the Kemess copper gold deposit operated by Northgate Minerals. Geological field work conducted intermittently in the area since the 1970s has identified numerous copper-gold prospects, including the Pine porphyry copper-gold deposit. This large area remains highly prospective for large copper-gold mineralization and the Company believes that continued exploration will result in the discovery and development of an economic deposit.
Cascadero is a junior exploration company focused on assembling and developing mineral prospects with large-scale potential. In addition to the Companys' Toodoggone land position, it owns a 50% interest in Salta Exploraciones SA, which company holds a 100% interest in 46 properties (approx. 102,000 hectares) in northwestern Argentina. The suite of mineralization identified to date includes IOCG, epithermal base metals, sediment hosted gold, high-sulphidation, silver, lithium and several properties with alkali metal potential, especially cesium.
Gold Fields limited is one of the world's largest unhedged producers of gold with annual attributable production of approximately four million ounces of from nine operating mines in Peru, Ghana, Australia and South Africa. The company has attributable ore reserves of approximately 83 million ounces and mineral resources of approximately 251 million ounces. In addition the company has an extensive exploration portfolio with highly prospective projects in all of the major gold provinces of the world.
