Keweenaw Land Association, Limited announced that it has completed the purchase of 29,071 acres of severed mineral properties from Sage Minerals Inc. for $5,000,000 in cash. The primary driver for the purchase was to increase Keweenaw’s ownership of the mineral reserves underlying Highland Copper’s Copperwood Project. The transaction includes 2,500 acres of mineral rights adjacent to existing interests and increases Keweenaw’s mineral tenure to around 80% of Copperwood’s overall estimated reserves. The newly acquired acreage is already under a lease and option agreement with Highland Copper Company that has been assumed by Keweenaw and will convert to a royalty once the Copperwood Project goes into production. The mineral package Keweenaw acquired also contained 26,571 acres of mineral properties located in historic copper producing districts in Michigan and Northern Wisconsin, which includes prospective and underexplored properties in Gogebic, Ontonagon, and Baraga counties. 18,426 acres of the acquired mineral properties in Gogebic County are largely contiguous to mineral properties already owned by Keweenaw. The remaining acres are located in Arenac and Bay counties in Michigan’s lower peninsula and Ashland and Douglas counties in Wisconsin, which are areas where Keweenaw had not previously owned any minerals. As a real property investment, the transaction qualifies as a 1031 exchange. Over 60% of the purchase price was funded from cash held in escrow from recent land sales, including the Big Bay property sale in March of this year. Accordingly, Keweenaw expects to defer more than $800,000 in cash taxes during 2021.