MOD Resources has sold its 80% Sams Creek holding to Condamine Resources for $A3.8million ($NZ3.96million), but will retain an up to 15% stake in Sams Creek once Condamine lists on the ASX later in the year.
Melbourne-headquartered Oceana Gold, which operates the Macraes gold mine in East Otago, holds the remaining 20%, having earlier been the majority shareholder.
Sams Creek, northwest of Nelson, is in exceptionally rugged terrain within a ridgeline and has been an exploration target off and on for 43 years.
Often touted as the country's ''largest undeveloped gold prospects'', it has an estimated resource of 1million oz of gold but has never been mined.
Under MOD's October 2011 agreement with Oceana, it had spent more than $6million in exploration at the site, thereby earning the right to increase its stake from 40% to 60%, then to 80% in September 2015.
The tenement, covering 30.6sq km, is close to the Takaka River, in steep country covered by beech and kamahi forests and bordered by the Kahurangi National Park.
MOD said yesterday the project had potential for development as an underground mine and was located close to power, infrastructure and a sealed road linking it to Port Nelson.
MOD said Condamine was ''focused on opportunities'' in New Zealand with an underground mining strategy and aimed to become a ''significant gold producer'' here.
Late last year, MOD got a four-year extension to the exploration permit for Sams Creek.
Condamine has a recent West Australian company registration but does not appear to have a New Zealand company presence.
Separately, MOD is actively exploring in the Kalahari copper belt in Botswana. It has a 70% stake in a copper silver deposit and is expected to complete an open pit pre-feasibility study towards the end of the year.
MOD's former managing director Miles Kennedy was a Macraes mine founder in the late-1980s and also secured access to Sams Creek and Reefton, the latter mothballed by Oceana last year.
GNS Science has published several papers on the Sams Creek area, 25km south of Takaka, saying gold was first discovered there in 1974.
Sams Creek was discovered in 1974 by CRA Exploration (now Rio Tinto), which conducted extensive exploration in the 1980s, including drilling 46 diamond test holes totalling 5847m.
In 1991, CRA Exploration sold its New Zealand gold exploration assets, including Sams Creek, to an entity that became owned by Oceana. A further drilling programme was done in 2004.
