Red Rock Resources PLC (AIM:RRR) said it exchanged shares in Red Rock Australasia Pty Ltd (RRAL) for a 50.1% holding in New Ballarat Gold Corporation PLC (NBGC), a newly formed UK public company which now owns 100% of RRAL and will be the vehicle for a possible listing in London.
Red Rock’s joint venture partner Power Metal Resources PLC (AIM:POW) said it has transferred its RRAL shares to New Ballarat, in which it now owns 49.9%.
RRAL is undertaking gold exploration at its granted licences in the Victoria Goldfields in Australia.
Red Rock chairman Andrew Bell commented: "The new structure will enable the [Victoria] project to advance more quickly, access outside capital more easily, including through a planned separate listing, and act more independently."
Red Rock also announced that RRAL has been granted a new exploration licence (EL007328) in Victoria, taking the total number of licences to eight, covering an area of 1,012 square kilometres (km2).
RRAL has applications in process for eight other new gold exploration licence areas covering approximately 2,057 km2 in the Victoria Goldfields
“Progress in granting of our remaining licence applications continues,” said NBGC CEO Dave Holden.
“The newly granted EL007328 lies south and south east of Ballarat, is adjacent to two of our key granted licences, and contains a southern extension of one of the mineralised trends we are currently preparing to drill.
“December and January look set to be active and important months for NBGC, only briefly interrupted by Christmas."
Red Rock and Power Metal also gave an update on the ongoing soil sampling programme south of Ballarat.
Interim results from the 1,091 soil samples tested by Portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) have identified several new anomalies and confirm the regional correlation of arsenic anomalism with historic gold workings and known gold-bearing structures, they said.
At the Buninyong licence, the sampling identified an “exciting” new 1km long north-south oriented arsenic anomaly, which is coincident with a line of gold mineralisation extending north of Mt. Buninyong.
South of Mt Buninyong at O'Loughlins, a diamond drill programme on 1km long structures is planned to begin in December.
In the Pitfield licence, a strong anomaly was identified surrounding known gold mineralisation at Mt Bute. A drill programme is planned to start at Pitfield early next year, with a further target identified for potential drilling in February.
“We have seen a good correlation with known gold structures we were already exploring and have been able to identify a number of strike extensions, including a significant northern extension of the trend passing through Mt Buninyong,” said Holden.
“The information we continue to derive from this programme assists our drill targeting and could be important as we seek out economically significant orebodies.”
In a separate statement, Power Metal CEO Paul Johnson said: "Exploration on our licences within the Victoria Goldfields has been successful with recent soil sampling highlighting multiple high-priority gold targets across granted licences. Certain of these targets are now at the drill-ready stage and will be the subject of the planned upcoming drill programmes, showing great progression from RRAL's ground exploration to date.
“We believe there is potential for major gold discoveries in the granted licences we hold, something which is not surprising given the geological attractiveness of the region, and multiple large-scale discoveries made and gold mines built in the state of Victoria. Therefore the launch of inaugural diamond drilling is an important step forward and we will be eager to see what this drilling delivers."
Red Rock shares climbed 4.17% to 0.50p, while Power Metal stock was 1.64% higher at 1.55p in late morning trade.