Sleeping Beauty, Arizona
Sleeping Beauty is a porphyry copper project in the Globe-Miami District of Arizona. EMX has a Regional Strategic Alliance agreement, through its wholly owned subsidiary Bronco Creek Exploration, Inc. (“BCE”), with South32 Limited (“South32”) covering Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, but excluding South32’s Hermosa project in southern Arizona. The Agreement provides funding for generative work and property acquisitions, as well as a framework to advance projects of interest. Under the terms of the Agreement, which has an initial term of two years, South32 will provide annual funding for generative work performed by EMX personnel to identify properties for exploration work (“Alliance Exploration Properties” or “AEPs”). EMX personnel will conduct exploration on AEPs with additional funding from South32 in order to identify drill stage projects as Designated Projects. Designated Projects will advance under separate option agreements providing for work commitments and cash payments to EMX during South32’s earn-in period, and upon earn-in, a 2% net smelter return (“NSR”) royalty interest and pre-production and milestone payments to EMX’s benefit. (see Company news release dated December 6, 2018). Sleeping Beauty has been selected by South32 as an initial AEP.
Sleeping Beauty lies on the flanks of the Schultz Granite intrusive complex, which is associated with numerous past and current producing copper mines and deposits in the Globe-Miami and Superior mining districts. Porphyry copper deposits in this region have been dismembered by numerous post-mineral faults that displace upper levels of the mineralized systems northeastward. The Sleeping Beauty project lies at the east end of a northern trend of fault bounded deposits that include Pinto Valley, Diamond H and Copper Cities. Sleeping Beauty is directly north of the Copper Cities open pit copper mine, and is interpreted to contain down-dropped blocks of mineralization north of the Sleeping Beauty fault. Other fault-bounded copper deposits in the district at similar structural levels include Copper Cities, Miami East, Van Dyke, and Old Dominion.
Note: The nearby mines and deposits in the region provide context for EMX’s Project, which occurs in a similar geologic setting, but this is not necessarily indicative that the project hosts similar mineralization.