Elevate Uranium intends to use the US$25 million raised on October 22, 2024, to fund the Koppies Uranium Project and its U-pgrade™ uranium ore beneficiation process.
The company says the results from the ongoing metallurgical testwork program at the Koppies uranium project using the U-pgrade™ will inform the design of a demonstration plant planned to operate by mid-2025.
The U-pgrade™ is potentially an industry-leading and economically transformational beneficiation process for upgrading surficial uranium.
This breakthrough process was developed on ore from Elevate Uranium’s Marenica Uranium Project, and subsequently, testwork has been undertaken on ore samples from several other uranium resources.
Elevate Uranium has demonstrated, in bench scale testwork, that the U-pgrade™ beneficiation process concentrates the uranium by a factor of 50 and increases Marenica Project ore grade from 93 ppm to ~5,000 ppm U3O8.
U-pgrade™ also rejects ~98% of the mass before leaching, producing a high-grade concentrate in a low mass of ~2% (leach feed). In addition, U-pgrade™ rejects acid consumers, potentially reducing operating costs by ~50% and capital costs by ~50% compared to conventional processing.
Elevate Uranium has determined, through bench-scale testing, that calcrete-hosted uranium deposits in Namibia and Australia are among those that are amenable to the U-pgrade™ process.
Additionally, Elevates Uranium wants to use the funds to complete a Koppies Uranium Project Scoping Study or a higher-level study and to drill about 100,000 metres of resource and exploration across its Namibian and Australian tenement portfolio.
