TSX-listed Wallbridge Mining has entered into an option agreement to acquire an advanced gold exploration project near its flagship Fenelon gold property.

The company announced on Wednesday that it had entered into an option agreement to acquire the Beschefer property from fellow-listed Excellon Resources subsidiary Lateegra Gold.

Adding the project to its pipeline not only increased Wallbridge’s footprint in the region, but it also supported the future evaluation of a possible central processing plant, president and CEO Marz Kord said in a media release.

The Beschefer project covers 647 ha and is located in the Northern Abitibi Greenstone Belt, 14 km east of the past-producing polymetallic Selbaie mine, 45 km north-east of the Casa Berardi mine and 28 km from Wallbridge's Fenelon Gold property. Historically, the area has mainly been explored for volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits similar to the Matagami camp and the Selbaie mine.

Gold mineralisation was discovered in the B-14 Zone in 1995 by Billiton Canada and the property has seen very limited exploration before the involvement by Excellon in 2011, which completed about 17 000 m up to 2013. Excellon's programmes produced positive results, extending the B-14 mineralisation down to almost 600 m vertical depth, discovering the upper shear zone and intersecting the highest-grade intersections on the property, including 55.63 g/t gold over 5.57 m and 13.07 g/t gold over 8.75 m.

There has been no exploration at Beschefer since 2013.

"We are keen to start exploration on the Beschefer project, which has demonstrated size and grade potential," stated exploration VP Attila Péntek.

"The B-14 Zone is a large-scale structure located in a favourable orogenic gold setting, which shows good continuity, consistent thickness and hosts high grade mineralisation. To date, it has only been tested by wide-spaced historic drilling with holes 75 m to 100 m apart. Our strategy will be similar to that which we executed successfully at Fenelon. Initially, we will be tightening the drill pattern to test the continuity of the known high-grade shoots, following which we will explore for additional parallel high-grade zones within the B-14 Zone structure and other nearby shear zones in an effort to drill off a significant underground gold resource," he commented.

The option will be effectively exercised when Wallbridge has funded and incurred expenditures totalling $4.5-million and issued common shares, which total seven-million common shares.