WIN secures Butchers Creek ground and tailings footprint for $115,000

Tailings footprint secured for modest upfront cost

WIN Metals Limited (ASX:WIN) has secured additional ground around its Butchers Creek Gold Project in Western Australia’s Kimberley region for an upfront outlay of $115,000, with the most immediate benefit being practical rather than purely geological: one of the new licences covers part of the planned tailings storage facility footprint.

“Butchers Creek Project and acquisition tenure”

“Butchers Creek Project and acquisition tenure in wider regional setting.”

Caption and image © Win Metals Ltd. From “WIN Scales Up Butchers Creek With Additional Gold Tenure”, 4 Nov 2026.

WIN’s wholly owned Butchers Creek Metals will acquire Exploration Licences 80/5607 and 80/5608 from IGO Limited (ASX:IGO) for $100,000, while paying a separate $15,000 non-refundable fee for an exclusive five-year option over Exploration Licence 80/5248 from Metal Bank Limited (ASX:MBK). The IGO acquisition is expected to complete by 31 December 2026, subject to any required third-party consents.

Project package grows to 343 square kilometres

The transactions increase WIN’s Butchers Creek tenure by 62% to 343 square kilometres. The company says the IGO ground immediately west of the Butchers Creek open pit incorporates part of a previous tailings dam facility, potentially allowing remaining designed capacity to be incorporated into future operations with minimal changes to the original design, subject to the necessary approvals.

That could reduce the complexity of the proposed mining footprint, although the announcement does not establish that the facility has been approved or that the design will proceed unchanged. The new tenure also adjoins Hastings Technology Metals’ (ASX:HAS) Brockman Rare Earths and Niobium Project.

Historical workings open further gold targets

Beyond the infrastructure angle, the ground carries historical gold workings immediately west of the open pit and along strike from Golden Crown. The Metal Bank tenure includes roughly 3.4 kilometres of reported discontinuous historical workings at Darcys, but WIN describes it as a grassroots exploration opportunity with little modern exploration.

“WIN’s Gold, Nickel and Lithium Project Locations.”

WIN says the additional ground could provide targets capable of expanding Butchers Creek’s existing Mineral Resource of 5.6 million tonnes at 1.98 grams per tonne gold for 359,000 ounces. That is exploration potential rather than a revised resource: no new estimate or discovery was reported in the announcement.

Royalties and option costs remain on the table

The IGO deal includes a 2% net smelter return royalty on ores, concentrates and other products extracted from the acquired licences. If WIN exercises the Metal Bank option before it expires on 4 November 2031, it must pay a further $85,000, grant Metal Bank a 0.75% royalty on gold produced from the tenure and pay an additional $250,000 if it identifies a JORC Code Mineral Resource containing 100,000 ounces of gold in aggregate there.

The low entry price therefore does not represent the full potential cost of the expanded package. The near-term milestones are completion of the IGO acquisition, the approvals needed for the tailings facility and whether exploration results give WIN a reason to exercise the longer-dated Metal Bank option.