Pacific North West Capital takes 100% of River Valley

Pacific North West Capital (PFN-T, PAWEF-O) is acquiring Anglo Platinum’s 50% interest in the River Valley platinum group metals joint-venture project in Ontario, one of Canada’s largest primary PGM deposits, bringing its total ownership to 100%.

The deal follows just two months after Stillwater Mining (SWC-N) closed its acquisition of Marathon PGM’s platinum assets, also in Ontario, in a cash and shares deal valued at $118 million – underscoring the attractiveness of stand-alone PGM projects in North America. (Stillwater Mining is the only U.S. producer of palladium and platinum and is also the largest primary producer of PGM’s outside of South Africa and Russia.)

In exchange for its 50% stake in the River Valley PGM joint venture, Anglo Platinum, the world’s leading primary producer of platinum group metals, which accounts for about 40% of the world’s newly mined platinum, will receive a 12% interest in Pacific North West Capital.

The aggregate purchase price involves 8.12 million common shares of Pacific North West Capital and three-year warrants exercisable to buy 3 million common shares at a price of 30¢ apiece.

Pacific North West Capital acquired the project, about 60 km from Sudbury, in 1998. A year later it entered into a joint-venture with Anglo Platinum. It remained the operator and defined a NI 43-101 compliant measured resource of 8.53 million tonnes grading 1.29 grams palladium per tonne for 353,000 oz. palladium; 0.43 gram platinum per tonne for 116,800 oz. platinum; and 0.07 gram gold per tonne for 20,400 oz. gold in the measured category.

In the indicated category the deposit is estimated to contain 22.02 million tonnes grading 0.85 gram palladium for 600,700 oz. palladium; 0.30 gram platinum for 212,800 oz. platinum, and 0.06 gram gold for 39,000 oz. gold.

Inferred resources add 2.39 million tonnes of 0.87 gram palladium for 67,000 oz. palladium; 0.31 gram platinum for 23,800 oz. platinum, and 0.05 gram gold for 4,000 oz. gold.

Pacific North West Capital says it plans to focus on target areas where mineralization is open to depth and along a strike length of 9 km, but weren’t followed up due to the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008.

Induced polarization (IP) surveys have identified mineralized zones on the property and the company now plans to enhance earlier work with more recent 3D technology.

More than 110,000 metres in 550 holes have been drilled so far.

At presstime in Toronto Pacific North West Capital was trading at 19¢ per share. Over the last year it has traded in a range of 8¢-21.5¢ and has 67.6 million shares outstanding.