Rio Tinto makes $25.6M investment in Western Copper and Gold

Rio Tinto Canada is making a $25.6-million strategic investment in Western Copper and Gold (TSX: WRN; NYSE: WRN) of Vancouver. The international miner will purchase 11.8 million common shares of Western at a price of $2.17 per share. Rio will then hold an 8% interest in Western.

Rio will name a member to the Casino copper-gold project technical committee, send a non-voting observer to all Western board meetings, send up to three secondees to Casino, and should Rio increase its ownership to at least 12.5%, it can nominate a member to the board.

Western will remain the sole owner and operator of the Casino property 300 km northwest of Whitehorse, Yukon. The company will use Rio’s investment to advance the feasibility study and permitting of the project.

The Casino project has been under investigation by Western since 2008. A full feasibility study was published in 2013, and since then the resource estimate has been updated. The measured and indicated resource that will be milled is 2.17 billion tonnes grading 0.16% copper, 0.18 g/t gold, 1.4 g/t silver and 0.017% molybdenum,; and the inferred portion is 1.43 billion tonnes at 0.10% copper, 0.14 g/t gold, 1.2 g/t silver and 0.010% moly.

A separate portion of the resources will be leached. The leachable measured and indicated material is 217.4 million tonnes grading 0.03% copper, 0.25 g/t gold, 1.9 g/t silver; and the inferred portion is a31.1 million tonnes at 0.03% copper, 0.17 g/t gold, and 1.7 g/t silver.

Western is proposing a mine, a 120,000 t/d mill, and a 25,000 t/d heap leach over 22 years. Please visit www.CasinoMining.com for additional information and technical reports.