Alamos Gold is enlarging its turf in the Dubreuilville area.
The owners of the prolific Island Gold Mine have signed a definitive agreement to acquire Manitou Gold, a junior miner with 40,000 hectares of prospective ground adjacent to the Alamos mine property.
In a proposed $14-million deal, Alamos will acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Manitou, not already held by Alamos, already a 19 per cent owner of the exploration company.
Under the terms of the deal, Manitou shareholders will receive 0.003525 of an Alamos common share for each Manitou share, representing a value of $0.05 per Manitou share. Manitou shareholders will meet sometime in May to vote on the transaction. The Alamos board has unanimously approved the proposed deal.
The acquisition grows Alamos’ land package in the Dubreuilville area to more than 55,000 hectares, especially to the east, and along strike, within a very prospective geological structure called the Goudreau Lake Deformation Zone that lies within the Michipicoten Greenstone Belt.
This area has seen past mining activity, such as the Renabie Gold Mine, which once produced 1.1 million ounces of gold between 1947 and 1991, but the belt is considered largely unexplored.
Alamos has always taken an interest in a regional-scale approach to gold exploration in looking to add more ounces in the bountiful Wawa-Dubreuilville district.
The Toronto-based miner has made past investments in Manitou Gold and in another junior miner, Red Pine Exploration, which is working a gold property next to the Wawa airport.
Of particular interest to Alamos is Manitou’s Goudreau Project, which hosts several gold occurrences.
In a statement, Alamos President-CEO John McCluskey said since acquiring Island Gold in 2017, the company has had “tremendous success” in discovering more than four million ounces of high-grade reserves and resources through near-mine exploration.
“Through our acquisition of Manitou, we are more than tripling our land package along strike from Island Gold where we see excellent potential for additional high-grade discoveries across the prospective Michipicoten Greenstone Belt.”
In a news release, Manitou President-CEO Richard Murphy said his company saw an opportunity five years ago to put together a land package to enable the discovery and development of a large gold deposit.
“Having successfully acquired over 360 square kilometres of contiguous exploration claims and proven its exploration prospectivity over the last five years, we are confident that Alamos is the right operator to advance our assets through the next stages of exploration and development.”