Barrick Gold reveals 10% stake in Atac spin off company

Barrick Gold Corp. [ABX-TSX, GOLD-NYSE] has disclosed its holdings in Cascadia Minerals Ltd., a private company that was set up to own properties previously held by Atac Resources before the company was acquired by Hecla Mining [HL-NYSE].

Before it was swallowed by Hecla, Atac’s rights and interests in relation to a basked of properties in the Yukon and British Columbia were transferred to Cascadia, a company that is expected to begin trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol CAM in late July, 2023.

Concurrently with the closing of the Atac/Hecla arrangement, Cascadia completed a $2 million strategic investment with Hecla under which Hecla acquired 5.5 million units of Cascadia at 36 cents per unit. Each Cascadia unit consists of one common share and one warrant. Each warrant entitles Hecla to buy one additional Cascadia share for five years at 36 cents a share. This strategic investment leaves Hecla with a 19.9% stake in Cascadia.

Meanwhile, Barrick Gold has received 2.9 million common shares of Cascadia as partial consideration for the acquisition by Hecla Mining of all the common shares of Atac pursuant to a previously announced plan of arrangement among Hecla, Alexco Resources and Atac.

The Cascadia common shares owned by Barrick represent approximately 10.1% of Cascadia’s common shares.

The key assets held by Cascadia are the Catch property in the Yukon, PIL property in B.C. and Rosy property in the Yukon. Cascadia’s initial focus will be the Catch property with full details of 2023 exploration plans to be announced in the coming weeks.

The 71-square kilometre Catch property is located in central Yukon, 56 kilometres southeast of Carmacks, in an underexplored part of the Stikine terrane – a key geological tarrane which extends from the Golden Triangle in B.C. into the Yukon.

“The copper-gold porphyry-related Catch discovery presents a compelling grassroots exploration opportunity in an underexplored portion of the prolific Stikine Terrane, with many characteristics similar to the world-class Red Chris deposit in B.C.’s Golden Triangle,” said Cascadia Vice-President, Exploration, Adam Coulter. “We are just beginning to scratch the surface of a 5.0 kilometre long copper-in-soil anomaly and have identified two exciting drill targets for 2023,’’ he said.

High-grade copper and gold mineralization has been identified in outcrops across a 500-metre extent in the Main Zone, with rock samples returning peak values of 3.06% copper and 14.60 g/t gold.

Grab rock samples from a mineralized diorite porphyry body, that grade up to 1.27% copper with 0.57 g/t gold, were collected late in the 2022 field season south of the Main Zone. None of these high priority targets have been diamond drilled.