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Ortac Resources boosts its position in Zamsort

Published: 16:40 25 Aug 2015 AEST

Assay lab at Kalaba
Assay lab at Kalaba

Ortac’s (LON:OTC) big game hunting expedition in Zambia intensified today after the company exercised a US$600,000 call option in local exploration operator Zamsort.

Zamsort has the rights to a significant swathe of ground at Kalaba on the eastern end of the famous Zambian copper belt, not far from where Kiwara’s discovery in the last boom led to its sale to First Quantum (LON:FQM) in a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The plan is to repeat the same trick, or something similar, on the Kalaba project, backed by money from Ortac.

After having removed some longstanding legal logjams, Zamsort has recently been making rapid progress.

It’s renewed the small-scale mining licence at Kalaba, taken further samples, is in talks with contractors and drillers, and has put together a design for a demonstration processing plant.

The talk in mining circles is that some pretty big fish were interested in doing a deal with Zamsort, but that the company was content to partner up with a smaller operator like Ortac in order to retain a bigger portion of the upside that it believes is on offer at Kalaba.

The exercise of the US$600,000 call option by way of a secured convertible loan note takes the total invested by Ortac in Zamsort thus far to US$1.2mln and on conversion of the notes would take Ortac’s stake in Zamsort to 19.35%.

 “The Company has worked well with Zamsort, providing technical support, particularly through my appointment to the board,” said Ortac’s Vassilios Carellas.

He added that Ortac is now in discussions to “increase its interest in Zamsort further.”

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