County International Ltd (“County”) is an Australian company established for the purposes of mineral exploration with the aim of becoming a mineral commodities producer.
At the time of its ASX listing in 2011, County’s prime focus was on the definition, development and mining of coal resources with a specific focus on the Powder River Basin region in the USA. However, with the investment, political and end-user environment for coal turning negative over the last few years, the Company saw the need to expand the Company’s focus to other minerals in order to reduce risk, increase the business development opportunities and increase shareholder value.
In line with the change in focus, in June 2022, County reached agreement to acquire all the shares in Polymet Resources Pty Ltd (“Polymet”) the holder of two exploration tenements located about 27km north of Braidwood in NSW. Subject to the conditions precedent being met, Polymet will become a 100% subsidiary of County.
Key to this acquisition is that both the exploration tenements are located in the Lachlan Fold Belt. The Lachlan Fold Belt is a geological structure that hosts one of the world’s major minerals provinces (Au, Cu, Zn, Ag), which extends from Cobar in the north-west of New South Wales southwards across much of Victoria. It varies in width up to about 700km. The first major discovery of gold was in 1851 at the Ophir Gold Diggings near the Macquarie River northeast of the city of Orange. The zone is host to such discoveries as base metal mines Elura, CSA, Great Cobar, Chesney and gold producers New Occidental and Mt Boppy around Cobar, the Cadia Mine complex (Cadia and Cadia East open cut mines, Ridgeway and Cadia East underground mines) about 20 kilometres south of the regional city of Orange, NSW and Woodlawn mine about 50km NE of Canberra.
Upon completion of the aforementioned acquisitions, County will continue to monitor opportunities for its US coal assets but will primarily focus its activities on the two newly acquired exploration tenements, focusing on an exploration program with the aim of upgrading the known copper, gold, silver and zinc mineralisation to JORC Code 2012 Resource. (see Projects for further detail)
