Dynamic and MinRes tweak WA lithium joint venture deal

West Australian

6 days ago

ASX-listed Dynamic Metals has sealed a revamped lithium joint venture with mining heavyweight Mineral Resources at their Western Australian Widgiemooltha project in the Southern Goldfields by tweaking the key terms to extend their partnership and streamline their tenements.
The updated formal agreement expands on the original binding term sheet inked in March last year and provides for a sharpened focus on the duo's lithium hotspots.
Under the original deal, MinRes can earn up to 80 per cent of the lithium rights attached to Dynamic's fully owned leases over two stages for a total spend of $20 million.
The latest changes mean MinRes has an extra two years added to the stage two earn-in period - stretching it to six years in total - and gives the miner more runway to spend its way to a deeper stake in the prized lithium ground.
Dynamic has also received the final $1 million of a $3.6 million cash injection from MinRes for stage one, locking in the latter's initial 40 per cent interest in the lithium mineral rights across the joint venture ground.
The revised earn-in commitment for stage two has also been dialled back from $15 million to $14 million. Dynamic still sees this as a sizeable investment, underpinning MinRes' ongoing belief in the potential of the Widgiemooltha region to deliver another significant lithium discovery.
Notably, the updated structure isn't just a paper reshuffle - it sharpens the lithium focus. Sixteen tenements have been carved out of the joint venture and returned to full Dynamic control, allowing the partners to zoom in on land parcels showing the most promise.
The new deal frees up Dynamic to keep its eyes on the gold prize in the remainder of its expansive Widgiemooltha holdings, where it retains full ownership. That ground sits among some of WA's most fertile exploration real estate, just south of Kambalda and adjacent to several million-ounce gold systems.
The company has no less than 12 major gold prospects and at least 10 further targets showing decent sniffs of the yellow metal in the region. Management says the number of prospects is likely to grow as more exploration is conducted.
Dynamic recently announced it had received heritage clearance to move ahead with drilling on one of its hottest prospects, Chalice South, about 7 kilometres south of Westgold Resources' Chalice gold mine.
The licence takes in 14km of the same gold-rich greenstone corridor that's already churned out more than half a million ounces of gold. The historic Chalice mine, originally worked by Resolute Limited in the 1990s, yielded 2.9 million tonnes at a juicy 5.6 grams per tonne (g/t) for 517,000 ounces. Avoca Resources later took a bite with a boutique underground play before the site was mothballed in 2015.
Most recently, Dynamic's rig has also been probing its Anomaly A and Anomaly B targets at the company's Cognac West prospect, 40km to the northeast of Chalice.
The 19-hole phase two drilling program was designed to chase up on a stage one, 32-hole reverse circulation program in March, which hauled in some tantalising results. These included 32 metres grading 0.25g/t gold from 68m, 8m going at 0.36g/t gold and 16m at 0.29g/t gold from 84m.
In one particular hole, drilling peeled back even more layers, returning four separate gold-bearing zones ranging from 32m going at 0.25g/t from 32m, 12m grading 0.28g/t from 76m, 12m at 0.32g/t from 92m and 12m running at 0.28g/t from 112m.
While the grades aren't breaking records just yet, the widths are raising eyebrows. In particular, Dynamic is keeping a close eye on some notable copper hits suggesting a much larger mineralised system may be lurking beneath the surface.
With the lithium joint venture now locked in and restructured to reflect operational realities, MinRes and Dynamic appear ready to drill deeper into what could become WA's next big critical minerals success story.
And with the first-year technical reviews already complete and the highest priority ground now isolated, the stage is set for targeted, high-impact lithium exploration in the months ahead.
Both parties will be hoping the next round of drill bits strikes the kind of spodumene-rich pegmatites that have put WA at the epicentre of the global battery metals boom.
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