Deep Yellow Ltd (ASX:DYL) has increased the metal content by 12% at its Tumas uranium project located in Namibia.
The Tumas Mineral Resource Estimate is now 16.6 million tonnes at 366ppm uranium oxide for 13.4 million pounds of uranium oxide.
The quality of the resource estimate has significant increased with 62% of the resource now in the Measured category.
Greg Cochran, managing director, commented: “This is another step towards the ultimate development of the Tumas Project.
“This mineral resource estimate will give us certainty for the critical first few years of production whilst the exploration target demonstrates the longer life potential of the project.
“With the recent milestones achieved it is no surprise that Tumas is rapidly becoming recognised as Namibia’s next uranium mine.”
Background
Deep Yellow is a Namibian-focussed advanced stage uranium exploration company.
The company recently completed metallurgical testwork and is evaluating fast track development options for its Tumas Project.
Deep Yellow also holds the Omahola Open Pit Alaskite Heap Leach Project on which value engineering studies are being conducted to supplement the recently completed preliminary economic analysis.
Tumas Project
Tumas is divided into three zones, Zones 1 and 2 contain the new mineral resource whilst Zone 3 contains an exploration target.
Zones 1 and 2 have a JORC 2012 Mineral Resource Estimate of 16.6 million tonnes at 366ppm uranium oxide for 13.4 million pounds of uranium oxide at a cut-off of 200 ppm uranium oxide.
The resources estimate is classified as: 62% Measured, 36% Indicated and 2% Inferred.
For Tumas Zone 3 an exploration target has been confirmed which holds the potential to more than double the total Tumas Project resource.
Securing processing technology
Deep Yellow recently executed a technology licence agreement for the application of Marenica Energy Ltd’s (ASX:MEY) U-pgrade process at Tumas.
The commercialisation agreement follows the recent conclusion of a successful metallurgical testwork program and aims to share the economic benefit of the resource/technology combination.
The testwork program demonstrated that processing Tumas ore through the U-pgrade process has the potential to reject up to 98% of the mass whilst recovering over 82% of the uranium.
This could potentially reduce both capital and operating costs and enable the Tumas Project to be developed at a lower uranium incentive price.
Analysis
This resource upgrade represents another step towards the ultimate development of the Tumas Project for Deep Yellow.
Deep Yellow remains focussed on near-term development of its Tumas Project, which is the highest grade, undeveloped calcrete resource in Namibia.
Furthermore, Marenica’s U-pgrade process enables comparatively low costs.
The company will be completing a drilling program shortly which will further enhance its geological and metallurgical knowledge.
A prefeasibility study will be conducted in parallel with the drilling campaign.
The company is positioning itself to be the next uranium mine to be developed in Namibia.