Aura wraps up drilling to power Tiris uranium upgrade

Aura has reached a key milestone in its goal to upgrade resource confidence at its Tiris uranium project in Mauritania after completing drilling and logging operations.

The 10,000m infill aircore drill program was designed to upgrade the current Inferred resource of 26.3 million pounds of U3O8 at a 100ppm U3O8 cut-off into the higher confidence Measured or Indicated categories and identify further exploration targets.

Samples from this program have been delivered to ALS Ireland and ANSTO Minerals, Australia, with the final results expected before the end of this year.

Aura Energy (ASX:AEE, AIM:AURA) is also progressing engineering and test work to confirm the Tiris flow sheet for an initial 800,000lb per annum project that will include capital and operating cost estimates.

With the Mauritania Government holding 15% of the Tiris Project, formalisation of the agreement in imminent, while discussions regarding potential offtake and financing opportunities are also progressing.

“Completion of drilling as part of the Resource Upgrade Program is a key milestone in developing Tiris, and it is aligned with our objective to achieve uranium production by 2025,” chief operating officer Dr Will Goodall said.

“Importantly, it also demonstrates clear progress on the path set in Q1 of this year to rapidly develop Tiris and grow its value for all our stakeholders, including the government and community, with whom we continue to work very closely.

Resource upgrade

The company noted that while conversion of Inferred resources to higher confidence categories through infill drilling has historically occurred at a ratio of about 65%, new sampling techniques have consistently resulted in the discovery of additional mineralisation when drilling areas with high surface radiometric signature.

Should this trend continue, Aura is confident of identifying sufficient U3O8 to support a 2Mlb to 4Mlb per annum operation within five years of initial production, which is due to occur in 2024..

Additionally, while a 2021 Feasibility Study has already determined that Tiris will have low capex and C1 operating cost of US$74.8m and US$25.43/lb of U3O8, progress has been made to further improve its economics.

This includes developing a pilot plant to test ore upgrading that increases grade by up to 600% while retaining 90% of the uranium and developing a new circuit that will enable the recovery of vanadium as a byproduct.

A front-end engineering study into the initial 800,000lb U308 per annum project is already underway.

This article was developed in collaboration with Aura Energy, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.