Mining

Elevate Uranium well-funded to ‘significantly accelerate’ exploration in Namibia and Australia

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By Lorna Nicholas - 
Elevate Uranium ASX EL8 Marenica Energy MEY

Marenica’s stock is now trading under the new name Elevate Uranium and ticker code ‘EL8’.

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With $16.5 million in the bank, Elevate Uranium (ASX: EL8) plans to “significantly accelerate” its uranium exploration and development activities with a maiden resource for its Koppies target in Namibia due early next year.

The company boosted its bank balance last month with a $11.5 million placement, which attracted “overwhelming” demand.

Elevate currently has 94.4 million pounds of uranium in resources across its Namibian and Australian projects and plans to rapidly expand on this.

“In recent years, we have achieved significant success in acquiring uranium tenements and projects, exploring for and identifying significant uranium mineralisation, and consolidating the company’s inventory of 94.4Mlb of JORC uranium resources,” Elevate managing director Murray Hill said.

“With cash of $16.5 million, the company will now significantly accelerate the pace of its activities and we will hit the ground running in the new year, with aggressive exploration programs throughout 2022 in both Namibia and Australia.”

Exploring Namibia

Elevate is the largest uranium tenement holder in Namibia and owns the Namib Area, Mile 72 Area and Marenica Area projects.

The Marenica Area hosts 61Mlb in uranium resources.

Koppies is part of the Namib Area and previous drilling in 2019 uncovered grades between 300-350 parts per million uranium.

A maiden resource for Koppies is expected to be revealed early next year. Pending a favourable outcome, Elevate plans to undertake further drilling to boost this resource to indicated status.

The company will also carry out a metallurgical test work program on Koppies ore using its proprietary U-pgrade process. Elevate says its U-pgrade beneficiation process can materially lower development and operating costs on calcrete hosted uranium projects.

Other exploration in the Namibia will comprise drilling at the Hirabeb prospect, and Marenica. Geophysical surveys are also planned for Mile 72, Capri and other tenements not explored during 2021.

Exploring Australia

In Australia, Elevate’s Angela project hosts 31Mlb in uranium resources.

The company plans to complete exploration activities at Angela in 2022 to boost resources and confidence as well as undertaking metallurgical test work and technical studies.

At the Oobagooma project in WA’s Kimberley, Elevate has established an exploration target of 26-52Mlb uranium.

Plans at this project will comprise compiling historical results to develop a JORC resource as well as securing drill samples to evaluate if the ore is amenable to Elevate’s U-pgrade process.

Other work in Australia will involve reviewing historical drill data from its Minerva asset and assessing Thatcher Soak mineralisation to gauge if U-pgrade can be used on the ore.