Alamos to buy Orford Mining

Alamos Gold has agreed to acquire Orford Mining in an all-stock deal to add the Qiqavik gold project in Quebec, Canada and the West Raglan, Joutel and Nunavik Lithium exploration properties.

Orford shareholders will receive 0.005588 of an Alamos share for each Orford share, representing a value of 10c per Orford share, a 114% premium to its January 12 closing price and valuing the junior at about C$23 million. Alamos expects to issue about 900,000 shares for consideration of C$16 million. Alamos currently owns 61.7 million Orford shares, about 27.5% of its outstanding shares.

"Our acquisition of Orford is consistent with our strategy of building out a pipeline of high-quality, long-term projects in good jurisdictions to complement our near-term organic growth projects in Canada.

We see excellent long-term potential within the underexplored Qiqavik district and look forward to building off Orford's success with a larger and sustained exploration program," said Alamos Gold chief executive John McCluskey.

"In just over six years of existence as a public company, Orford has built … one of the largest property positions in Quebec totalling 1,787km2. Orford has acquired exploration properties in areas that were either completely unexplored or vastly underexplored and has proven these properties have significant mineral potential.

We are confident that Alamos has the skill set and balance sheet to advance the Orford projects through the next stages of exploration and development, said Orford Mining chief executive David Christie.

Qiqavik covers 438km2 in the Cape Smith Belt in Nunavik, Quebec, including the 40km long Qiqavik Break, a major crustal-scale structure controlling gold mineralisation on the belt. Early-stage exploration completed to date indicates that high-grade gold occurrences are controlled by structural splays off the Qiqavik Break, which extends along strike over the 40km length of the project. Orford has identified over 40 highly prospective targets across the property through mapping, prospecting, till sampling, geophysics, and limited drilling.

The West Raglan property is under option with Wyloo Metals, whereby Wyloo can earn up to an 80% interest for total expenditures of $25 million over seven years. In 2023, Wyloo satisfied the first earn-in milestone and acquired 51% ownership interest and provided notification that it intends to earn an additional 19% to take its interest to 70%.

West Raglan is a 646km2 property in the Cape Smith Belt in the Nunavik Region where nickel, copper, cobalt and PGM mineralisation is hosted in ultramafic units similar to Glencore's Raglan mine.

Shares in Alamos Gold are trading at C$17.23, valuing the company at C$6.8 billion.