Minmet plans Canadian spinoff for Dominican assets

Dublin-based Minmet intends to spin off its assets in the Dominican Republic for flotation on the TSX Venture Exchange via a reverse-takeover by Ontario-based Wellington Cove Explorations.

The plan calls for Wellington to acquire Minmet’s Dominican-based holding company, Exploration & Discovery Latin America (Panama), by issuing more than 19.6 million newly minted Class A shares at a deemed price of 15 per share, representing 92% of its expanded share base. Wellington currently has just over 1.7 million shares issued and outstanding.

On completion, Wellington plans to raise $1.5 million for exploration and corporate expenses by issuing 5 million shares at 30 apiece. The company will also look to list on the TSX Venture Exchange. When the dust settles, Minmet will be left with about 70% of the new vehicle.

Wellington will seek shareholder approval for a new slate of directors, a possible name change to GoldQuest Mining, and the adoption of a new stock option plan and bylaws.

MinMet’s Dominican portfolio includes nearly 220 sq. km of wholly owned gold exploration properties with drill targets. The company also has a 51% stake in the Bacco y Ofir and Josefina concessions; Energold Mining (ECD-V) holds the remaining stake.

The best target at Bacco y Ofir is a 1,400-by-700-metre gold-in-soil anomaly containing up to 1.1 grams gold per tonne and as much as 0.16% copper. Rock samples from the area returned up to 9.6 grams gold. Limited drilling returned two 1-metre intervals of 2.6 grams gold and 0.3% copper, and 2.3 grams gold and 0.6% copper. The drilling failed to indicate any depth extent to the surface gold geochemistry, and no further work was planned. The property is in the Los Ranchos Formation.

At Josefina, two large gossanous areas with highly anomalous geochemistry, El Altar and El Can, are believed to represent mineralized porphyries highly anomalous in molybdenum. Josefina is in the Maimon Formation, 18 km northwest of Placer Dome‘s (PDG-T) Pueblo Viejo gold mine.

Also, Minmet has an option on the Longyear 1 and Centenario (El Higo) projects, held by Energold. A 20-hole drill program by Energold on Longyear 1 returned up to 5 metres grading 2.9 grams gold, 6.1 grams silver and 0.05% copper. The campaign’s longest interval, 34 metres, grades 1.2 grams gold, 12 grams silver, and 0.46% copper. The property is 2.5 km northeast of the Moore and Monte Negro deposits at Pueblo Viejo. Previous drill results from El Higo include up to 9.2 grams gold per tonne over 23.1 metres, including 10.5 metres grading 13.8 grams.

In 2003, Minmet joined with South Africa’s Gold Fields (GFI-N) in the hunt for high-sulphidation gold-silver deposits west of Placer Dome’s Pueblo Viejo gold project. The pair recently staked several concessions following stream-sediment sampling, and follow-up work has begun.