Thor Mining ups Dundas gold stake to 60%, shares surge

On the London Stock Exchange, Thor Mining (LON:THR, ASX:THR) shares surged 35% on news the company acquired a further 9% in the Dundas gold project. The company has already enjoyed success at Dundas, during the early stages of exploration, since Thor took on the project earlier this year.

In February Thor acquired a 51% stake in the Dundas project for A$100,000, and it also secured options to acquire the remaining 49% interest in the property.

The company has now exercised the first of these options, issuing 45m CDI (Chess Depositary Interests) securities - tax efficient shares issued on the Australian Securities Exchange - in return for an additional 9% stake in the project. Thor now has a 60% interest in the Dundas property.
Under the terms of February’s deal Thor can acquire the entire project.

Once the company has spent A$1m exploring Dundas, it can acquire a further 20% and take its stake to 80% by issuing further shares worth A$2m by 30 September 2012. And finally, with a further A$1m spent on exploration, or another A$2m in shares, Thor can buy up the remaining 20% stake.

The Dundas Project is located within the general southerly strike extension of the most gold-rich part of the Yilgarn province, the Wiluna-Kalgoorlie-Norseman greenstone belt.

The company highlighted that, through its exploration to date, it has already five new areas of ‘gold anomalies’, on top of the initial target areas from previous work on the property. Thor asserts that each of these areas warrant systematic follow-up sampling.

In July, Thor told investors that the sampling the results represent the greatest concentration of high gold values encountered on the property to date.

This morning Thor confirmed that a new calcrete sampling program, which will broaden the coverage and add detail around the newly identified anomalies, will commence as soon as practicable. Additionally, an initial rotary air blast drilling program is planned.