Sovereign Gold has secured an increase in funding to AUD 21 million from China's Jiangsu Geology and Engineering Company to fast track exploration of the company's gold tenements in New South Wales.
Sovereign Gold and Precious Metal Resources, which is 81% owned by Sovereign, have entered into further cooperation and investment agreements with Jiangsu to contribute an additional USD 15 million towards exploration on a number of Sovereign Gold's New England tenements.
The initial agreement between the companies provided for USD 6 million in exploration funding.
Jiangsu will commit a dedicated team of up to 14 geologists, geochemists and geophysicists to work with Sovereign Gold on the projects.
The Chinese state owned enterprise will be entitled to a 30% interest in each respective tenement upon meeting the associated expenditure commitment for that tenement.
However, Sovereign Gold has 9 exploration licenses covering 2,640 square kilometer including the historic Rocky River Uralla Goldfields. The company also has 4 exploration license applications over 1,200 square kilometers.
Sovereign has identified the potential for an intrusion related gold system, outlining an exploration target of 0.5 million to 2 million ounces of gold.
Eastern Australia has potential for the discovery of further IRGS within the New England Orogen/Tasman Fold Belt. The large gold mineralized system discovered by Sovereign Gold extends for at least 11 kilometer from north to south and 6.5 kilometer from east to west.
