Chamwe Kaira
Elevate Uranium managing director Murray Hill says the company’s U-pgrade Pilot Plant marks a pivotal step in its development. The plant is designed to confirm the U-pgrade beneficiation process on a continuous, scalable basis and will operate in Namibia.
“Our team has worked diligently to ensure its readiness, and its operation in Namibia is central to validating the process at a continuous, scalable size. As we look to further optimise the development pathway in Namibia, the data and insights collected will be key to the technical studies that we aim to start during the period of pilot plant operation. We’re extremely pleased with progress to date, and we look forward to this next phase and reporting on future milestones as they are achieved. QAQC analysed results from the operation of the plant, which will take four to five months to collate and report,” Hill said.
The pilot plant is due to complete final factory testing and is scheduled for shipment to Namibia in early August. It is expected to arrive in October, after which it will be reassembled. Operations are scheduled to begin in November.
The plant will process at least 60 tonnes of uranium material. The results are expected to confirm production of a low-mass, high-grade concentrate. These findings will inform the design of a full-scale commercial U-pgrade plant.
Elevate Uranium has appointed a Namibian contractor to support the pilot plant operations.
The company’s senior metallurgist, Andrew Jones, will relocate from Perth to Namibia to oversee the arrival, reassembly, and operation of the plant.
Resource drilling is ongoing across the company’s Namibian uranium projects.
A total of 310 holes were drilled, covering 9,179 meters across multiple project areas. Most drilling took place on the Namib IV tenement, following the completion of an exploration programme at the Marenica Uranium Project.
This year’s exploration at the Namib IV prospect, located within the Koppies Uranium Project, focused on expanding the central mineralisation zone through broad-spaced drilling.
The exploration strategy at Namib IV was updated based on lessons from the Koppies resource, where drilling beneath and beside the paleochannel led to a resource increase of nearly 200%.
As Elevate Uranium works towards declaring a maiden mineral resource at Namib IV, next steps include further step-out drilling to define mineralisation boundaries, followed by infill drilling in targeted zones of higher-grade material.
These zones will then be drilled at appropriate spacing to allow for resource estimation.
Namib IV lies 10 kilometres from the southern boundary of the Koppies resource and is part of the broader Koppies Uranium Project.
The Marenica Uranium Project is located 25 kilometres north of Orano’s Trekkopje Uranium Project and 25 kilometres southeast of Elevate Uranium’s Capri tenement.
