The company will pay a combined $50,000 in cash and issue another 2 million shares to acquire the project, which company managing director Bruce Richardson said would complement its existing graphite and lithium projects.

Located 800km north of Perth and 300km east of Carnarvon, the Hooley Well project was most recently drilled by Red River Resources in 2010, with the company withdrawing from the project in early 2011 after failing to encounter nickel-bearing sulphides.

Anson said cobalt grades encountered from previous exploration programs on the Hooley Well site compared favourably with that of other nickel-cobalt laterite projects across Australia.

Among these were 22m at 0.97% nickel, 0.06% cobalt and 1.05% chromium, including 4m at 1.41% nickel, 0.11% cobalt and 1.99% chromium; and 33m at 0.5% nickel, 0.04% cobalt and 0.55% chromium, including 8m at 0.84% nickel, 0.1% cobalt and 0.22% chromium.

This is the first major acquisition for Anson since it relinquished its final tenement in the Gidgee project and offloaded its stake in Canada-listed Nevada gold explorer Iconic Minerals for $451,000 last year.

Anson was also granted a tenement in February which is prospective for zinc, lead and graphite mineralisation, bringing the size of its Ajana project near the Western Australian town of Northampton to 112sq.km.

“The granting of the tenement to the company has increased the prospectivity of identifying various commercially viable mineral development opportunities at the Ajana project area.

Shares in Anson closed yesterday at 3.6c, valuing the company at $6.3 million. The company had $1.5 million in cash at the end of the December quarter after raising $820,000 from the placement of 27.3 million shares at 3c each earlier this year.