Elevate Uranium is considering whether it can develop its Marenica and Koppies uranium projects in Namibia simultaneously, potentially allowing the company to transport concentrate between the two operations or benefit from shared refining infrastructure.
Managing director Murray Hill said Elevate plans to undertake separate studies on the two projects and use the results to determine which to develop first, or whether there is a case for advancing both at the same time.
“We have two studies running one behind the other and then we’ll work out from those study outcomes, which project is number one, first, and which one will trail behind a little bit or do we do them both together,” Hill said during an investor webinar on Thursday.
“We could be in a luxurious position of having two projects being developed at the same time with concentrate being transported from one to the other or, you know, economies of scale in terms of refinery. There’s a lot of things that we can work on out of those studies.”
The comments provide more detail on how Elevate could ultimately develop its Namibian uranium portfolio, with the company preparing to move Marenica into project studies before putting Koppies through the same process.
Marenica will be studied first. Elevate is completing infill drilling to place at least 30 million pounds of uranium into the indicated resource category before beginning financial studies. The company expects an updated Marenica resource estimate within the next few months.
Elevate increased its interest in Marenica from 75% to 90% this year.
Hill said the updated resource and results from the company’s pilot plant would feed into a scoping or concept study at Marenica.
“The resource update at marinica will be coming out in a few months. They’ll then feed into the study. So, we’ll get the marinica study kicked off,” he said.
Depending on the results, Elevate could then move into a higher-level study, potentially a definitive feasibility study, rather than proceeding through several intermediate study stages.
“You’ve got a resource that indicated you’ve got a pilot plant. You can go into the next stage,” Hill said.
“So, we’re going to short circuit some of the different stages of the studies that our peers go through.”
He said the company would move “from scoping concept straight into a high-level study”.
Once Marenica material has completed the pilot-plant programme, Elevate intends to put Koppies ore through the same facility. Hill said lessons from operating the plant on Marenica material should allow the Koppies programme to be completed more quickly, after which Koppies would move into its own study.
The broader Koppies Project contains 76.2 million pounds of uranium across three resources, comprising 55.9 million pounds at Koppies, 10.2 million pounds at Hirabeb and 10.1 million pounds at Namib IV.
Drilling is continuing at Namib IV, where Elevate expects the resource to increase.
The company is meanwhile continuing pilot-scale testing of its proprietary U-pgrade beneficiation process in Namibia.
Results from the first four of five stages showed that 88% of the original ore mass was rejected while 79% of the uranium was recovered from low-grade feed averaging 89 parts per million. The remaining material was upgraded to about 590 ppm uranium.
Hill said removing calcite was particularly important because calcite consumes large quantities of acid during conventional processing.
After the first four stages, about 12% of the original mass remains for leaching. Hill said removing the calcite means this material can be treated using an acid leach rather than the slower, higher-temperature alkaline process that would otherwise be required.
Elevate has previously estimated that its U-pgrade process could reduce capital and operating costs to roughly half those associated with conventional processing. Still, Hill stressed that the current pilot programme has not yet confirmed the figure and that the upcoming project studies will test it.
“We’ve always said that we need to prove it, and then we need to do a study to determine the costs,” he said.
“I can’t make any out now, and I can’t guess them, because I’m going to be wrong, whichever way you do it.”
The fifth and final stage of the pilot plant is targeted for completion before the end of 2026 after supply-chain problems delayed parts of the programme.
Hill said a reagent required for stage five took eight weeks to reach Namibia from Perth but turned out to be the wrong product, resulting in another four-week wait for a replacement. The company is now waiting for additional equipment expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
Elevate will also process higher-grade Marenica ore through the plant and expects uranium recovery to improve from the 79% achieved using the lower-grade historical material. Hill said recovery above 85% would represent a good outcome.
The company has about A$29 million in cash, which Hill said is sufficient to take it through completion of the Marenica study without another capital raising.
Exploration expenditure is also expected to decline as Elevate winds down the current Marenica infill programme, reducing the number of rigs from five to one.
