Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting has acquired a strategic stake of 18 per cent of Azure Minerals’ ordinary shares.
The news comes four days after SQM announced its intention to buy Azure Minerals for $3.52 per share, valuing Azure at $1.63 billion.
Azure owns 60 per cent of the Andover project in the West Pilbara region of WA, with the remaining 40 per cent owned by Creasy Group.
The Andover project is currently in its exploration phase. Nickel-focused exploration carried out at the site has discovered several significant bodies of nickel, copper and cobalt sulphide mineralisation, with two deposits drilled to mineral resource estimate status.
Andover also has potential to host significant lithium mineralisation as per identification of abundant spodumene-bearing, lithium-rich pegmatites within an area of nine kilometres (east-west) and up to five kilometres (north-south). Surface sampling has also returned numerous high grade lithium assays between one to five per cent of lithium oxide.
Hancock Prospecting said that its investment focus is long term.
“Hancock has a history of successful domestic and international partnerships across resources and agriculture – including at Roy Hill, S. Kidman and Co. and multiple earlier stage exploration projects with a range of other partners,” the company said.
“In each case, those businesses have benefited from the collective skills and expertise of the partners.”
Hancock Prospecting recently increased its strategic stake in Liontown Resources to 19.9 per cent, resulting in Albemarle’s $6.6 billion takeover attempt not moving forward.
Regardless of Hancock’s increased stake in Azure, it seems unlikely that SQM will be deterred.
“SQM is Azure’s largest shareholder, with a shareholding of approximately 20 per cent and the Andover lithium project fits perfectly in with our lithium business portfolio,” SQM chief executive officer Ricardo Ramos said last week.
“The expertise we have gained developing the Mount Holland lithium project, also located in Western Australia, along with more than 20 years in the lithium business, should enable us to successfully develop this project.”
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