Bundarra copper project owner Duke Exploration is making a move on a portfolio of North-West Queensland mineral assets including the Great Australia mine complex.

Duke Exploration has entered into a binding formal agreement with the shareholders of True North Copper to acquire all of the issued share capital in the company.

“The deal provides a pathway to accelerate the scale and development options available to DEX to fulfil our commitment to our shareholders of being a future copper producer,” Duke Exploration managing director Philip Condon said.

Two key projects coming under the deal include the Mount Oxide copper-cobalt development project, about 140 km north of Mount Isa (which True North is acquiring from Perilya) and the Cloncurry copper-gold restart project.

This is centred on the Great Australia mining leases and processing plant at Cloncurry, bolstered by a True North deal to gain an extra 12 mining leases plus exploration ground through an acquisition of CopperCorp.

The True North Copper asset package contains a JORC copper resource of 26.94Mt at 1.12 per cent copper, a JORC cobalt resource containing a combined 9.15Mt at 0.23 per cent cobalt, the Cloncurry Great Australia mine processing facilities, and more than 552sq km of prospective exploration tenements.

Duke sees opportunity to fast-track several assets into production, subject to further technical studies and financing.

If approved, the agreement will see Duke issue a total of 246,975,559 fully paid ordinary shares to the shareholders of True North. CopperCorp will be indirectly acquired by the company as a wholly owned subsidiary of True North and the company will issue a total of 16,000,000 shares to the shareholders of CopperCorp.

True North and CopperCorp shareholders will hold 85 per cent of the issued share capital of Duke.

True North Copper managing director Marty Costello said the transaction presented the opportunity to team up with a like-minded group focused on developing a future Queensland copper producer.

“Our business model of being a near-term producer being able to offer a number of copper products (high- grade copper sulphate and copper concentrate), will underpin future exploration and resource definition success,” he said.

“Much of our mineral tenure (exploration and mining) has had no significant exploration conducted for at least the last 10 years.”