Royal Road Arabia (RRA), part of Royal Road Minerals, has reached an option deal to acquire a 100% stake in Izughar Resources, which owns the Alouana copper-gold project in Morocco.

Izughar owns exploration licences in the provinces of Taourirt and Guercif in the eastern region of Morocco.

These locations have a historical context, as small-scale mining started in the last century and nearly 35 copper, gold and silver workings were identified within Izughar licence areas.

The Alouana project is located within an erosional window of Palaeozoic age metamorphic and intrusive igneous rocks. These rocks host copper, gold and polymetallic mineralisation including silver, tungsten and zinc.

The rock samples collected from mineralised occurrences have come up with encouraging results as copper returned at up to 21.02% and gold returned up to 5.89g/t.

Other elements such as silver had returned up to 493.84ppm and tungsten up to 0.36%. However, the Alouana project still needs to be drill-tested.

RRA also claims to have conducted soil geochemical sampling and geological mapping across the project’s licence areas. Results from the sampling had mapped copper mineralisation with about 2km of long ridge-top zone.

Along with further rock-chip and channel rock-chip sampling, the company looks to conduct magnetics and radiometrics across the Alouana project with plans to start scout drilling early next year.

Initially, it plans to focus on drill-testing the grade and volume potential of the layer.

Royal Road president and CEO Tim Coughlin said: “Alouana is a very typical thermal aureole copper and gold system formed above and adjacent to a granitic intrusion. This style of deposit hosts some of the world’s largest copper and gold resources and is a target style of key interest for Royal Road Arabia.

“A particularly important component of the Alouana occurrence is the shallow-dipping layer-parallel style of copper and gold mineralization which, when coupled with high-grade steep-dipping mineralised fractures, infers significant mineable volume potential at and close to the surface.”

RRA paid Izughar shareholders a sum of $50,000 after executing the option agreement. Within 270 days of its execution, RRA will earn a right to advance one or more licences to the point of drilling decision.

If RRA selects to drill test, it will have committed to a programme to drill for at least 2,000m in total and will apply for relevant drilling permissions.

After receiving approvals, it will make a one-time payment of $200,000 to Izughar shareholders.

On or before 60 days after completing the drilling programme or 14 days after securing the relevant and final geochemical analyses, it will also earn the right to acquire 90% stake in Izughar for a consideration of $750,000.

The balance 10% stake will be free carried to bankable feasibility when it will convert to a 2% net smelter returns (NSR) royalty.

An additional payment of $375,000 will also be paid to the shareholders after completing and publishing the resource report and a further $2m after the first bankable feasibility study is completed.