North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

New Age Metals Inc. April 14 announced that it has signed a binding letter of intent with Avalon Development Corp. for acquiring and exploring platinum group metals and rare earth projects in Alaska.

"We are pleased to partner with Avalon Development Corp. and its president Mr. Curt Freeman in Alaska," said New Age Metals Chairman and CEO Harry Barr. "The LOI accomplishes another milestone in 2018 for NAM which was to find a new mining jurisdiction and a qualified consulting group to help our company continue its search for green metals, PGMs, and rare metals."

The letter of intent calls for an agreement between the companies whereby Avalon, a Fairbanks-based geological consulting firm, will provide acquisition and geological services to New Age Metals in Alaska.

The agreement would provide New Age Metals with access to Avalon's extensive database of geological, geochemical and geophysical information on PGM and rare metals projects across Alaska.

Avalon will provide field manager services to investigate any projects New Age Metals acquires under the agreement and will receive finder's fees or property option compensation for its services.

New Age Metals already owns PGM and lithium deposits in Canada. The company's flagship property is the River Valley PGM project in northern Ontario.

Located about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Sudbury, River Valley hosts 160 million metric tons of measured and indicated resource averaging 0.44 grams per metric ton palladium, 0.17 g/t platinum, 0.03 g/t gold. When you combine the PGMs and gold, the average grade is 0.64 g/t and comes to around 3.3 million ounces of the four metals.

New Age Metals also has five pegmatite-hosted lithium projects in the Winnipeg River pegmatite field in southeastern Manitoba. Three of the projects are drill ready. In January, the company announced an agreement with Azincourt Energy Corp. to explore these properties.

New Age Metals plans to apply a similar partnership strategy to advance exploration on any projects it turns up in Alaska.

"In the event the company acquires one or more projects in the state of Alaska, we will utilize our prospector generator model, which has been successful in our Lithium Division, and will seek out partners to help us develop our newly acquired projects," said Barr.

–SHANE LASLEY