Antipa Minerals (ASX: AZY) - $60m exploration JV with RIO a good confidence builder

Antipa Minerals (ASX: AZY) maintains a first-class acreage position within the mineral-rich Telfer province in Western Australia – a fact reinforced by the recent signing of an agreement with Rio Tinto Exploration, which allows for Rio to spend up to $60m on Antipa’s flagship Citadel gold and copper project, which already hosts a sizeable combined resource of 1.2M ounces of gold, 139,000 tonnes of copper and 1.4M ounces of silver. The JV with Rio is a major breakthrough for Antipa in terms of guaranteeing exploration funding and reflects the underlying resource potential of the Citadel project, which lies just 75km north of Newcrest’s Telfer gold-copper-silver deposit. It also recently advised that a review of two newly acquired prospects had identified significant high-grade gold (with copper) mineralization from drilling work conducted by previous owners and a follow-up drilling program is just about to commence. The upcoming drilling program at Minyari is of strong market interest, as the project is situated just 40km away from Telfer’s infrastructure.