Jamaica’s efforts to mine gold and copper received a boost with the recent announcement by a Canadian entity that it has reached an agreement over prospects in St Catherine and Clarendon.

The company, C3 Metals Inc, which is listed on the Toronto Venture Exchange (under the symbol CCCM), recently announced that it has entered into a royalty purchase and assignment agreement with Rodinia Resources Pty Limited to purchase 1.5 per cent of a net smelter returns (NSR) on the company’s Main Ridge and Hungry Gully properties located in Jamaica. The NSR Purchase agreement replaces the original two per cent NSR with a 0.5 per cent NSR and provides the company with a right of first refusal to purchase the remaining 0.5 per cent NSR.

C3 Metals paid Rodinia US$75,000 as consideration and has agreed to issue 190,062 common shares of the company at a deemed value of $0.162 per share, being US$25,000 in C3 Metals common shares. Kevin Tomlinson, C3 Metals’ chief executive officer (CEO), told the Jamaica Observer that C3 Metals retains the Jamaica assets originally held by Carube Copper Corp. The new agreement will facilitate entry of a joint venture partner if needed, it was outlined.

The company, he said, targets the exploration of large scale copper-gold exploration opportunities in “mining friendly jurisdictions”. In the region it has also diversified geographically with the acquisition of the Jasperoide copper and gold project in Peru. The CEO admitted that there has been no mining done by the company on any of the exploration projects in Jamaica, yet.

He outlined, “Carube Copper started evaluating the projects in 2011 and has continued exploration since that time. Drilling at Bellas Gate has confirmed that there are porphyry systems with copper and gold values of importance. The company evaluates the success of each exploration campaign and if positive, money is allocated to proceed with the next phase of exploration. The company believes that there is sufficient potential on their projects in Jamaica to continue to explore.”

Tomlinson said that the board and management at C3 Metals include “a highly experienced team with technical and financial backgrounds and a track record of discovery and development success.”

The CEO outlined that there are several steps and hurdles that need to be met before any decision to go into production is made. These steps include initial exploration that would include soil sampling, rock sampling and geophysics that identifies copper and gold zones as potential drill targets; drilling and discovery of priority targets and identifying those targets that have consistent mineralisation; Mineral Resource Estimation which will give an initial idea of the contained copper and gold in the ground and Preliminary Economic Assessment(PEA) which applies current and predicted financial data to the mineral resource to see if it makes sense economically to move forward. The CEO said that C3 Metals is currently at the stage where it will be drilling the highest priority targets on a number of discoveries made on its exploration licences.

He indicated that he has been involved in exploration for over 30 years and has developed projects in many jurisdictions including West Africa and Australia. He said exploration expenditures since 2011 tops $20M Canadian. He stated, “Note that often it will take more than 20 years to develop a project from discovery to production, with more than half of that time getting to the mineral resource estimation stage.”

Explaining the new royalty arrangements, Tomlinson said that in Jamaica the Government holds a royalty on metals that are produced during commercial production, however, as it stands a previous licensee held an additional royalty. He outlined, “Our Main Ridge and Hungry Gully exploration licences were acquired in 2012 from Rodinia Resources Pty Ltd, an Australian-based exploration company. They now retain a 0.5 per cent royalty after C3 Metals purchased a portion as noted in our most recent press release.”

C3 Metals indicates that it holds a 100 per cent interest in five licences covering 207 km2 of highly prospective copper-gold terrain in Jamaica. Tomlinson said C3 Metals has an exploration office in the village of Bellas Gate which sits on the boundary of St Catherine and Clarendon parishes. The majority of exploration licences are located in this area. It also holds 100 per cent interest in two porphyry copper-gold properties, with one under option to Tocvan Ventures, covering 304 km2 within the Cascade Magmatic Arc in south-western British Columbia.