In April 2013, Erdene entered into an agreement with Teck Resources Limited (“Teck”), Canada’s largest diversified mining company, to fund and carry out exploration for base and precious metal opportunities in southwest Mongolia’s prolific Central Asian Orogenic Belt.
Under the terms of the Agreement, Teck had the option to subscribe for shares of Erdene, priced at the then current market plus 10%, until it had invested $3 million. As of September 2017, Teck has invested a total of $3 million. Going forward, the Alliance will continue to evaluate opportunities for acquisition and, depending on certain conditions, could enter into future agreements to acquire and advance designated projects.
A multi-year program of regional exploration, designed to identify porphyry and porphyry-related mineralization, has been underway since inception. The program has provided the Alliance with a significant amount of technical information to support future acquisition and exploration. Under the Teck Alliance, two licenses were staked in early 2015. Both are located in southwest Mongolia, are in the second year of a 12-year term. The 2016 exploration program consisted of surface geochemical sampling, geological mapping and prospecting, and analysis of newly acquired satellite data.
The 2017 field program consisted of detailed stream sediment sampling to follow up on anomalous results from a comprehensive regional stream program conducted over the entire Edren Terrane of southwest Mongolia in 2016. A second phase of work in 2017 consisted of ground-truthing stream sediment and ASTER anomalies, and additional work on previously identified target areas.
The Alliance excludes the Corporation’s Bayan Khundii, Altan Nar, Altan Arrow, Ulaan, Khuvyn Khar and Zuun Mod projects.