Niger Uranium buys stake in Henkries deposit
Niger Uranium has signed a share purchase agreement to acquire 74% of Namakwa Uranium, owner of the Henkries uranium project in South Africa. A government agency will continue to hold the rest.
Niger Uranium has signed a share purchase agreement to acquire 74% of Namakwa Uranium, owner of the Henkries uranium project in South Africa.
Under the agreement, URU Henkries Ltd - a newly formed company - will acquire 74% of the issued share capital of Namakwa Uranium from Aardvark Uranium. The acquisition will cost an initial $1.75 million in cash, plus 8.5 million Niger Uranium shares. A contingent deferred payment of a further $5.5 million in cash and 1.5 million shares.
The remaining 26% of Namakwa is held by the company's black economic empowerment partner, Gilstra Exploration. Namakwa holds the Henkries project prospecting licence, which covers over 58,000 hectares of land. The Henkries deposit has previously been explored by Anglo American and includes a historical non-code compliant resource estimate of 4.18 million tonnes at 405 parts per million (ppm) U3O8 containing 1690 tonnes U3O8 (1430 tU), using a 100 ppm cut-off grade.
On receipt of the necessary regulatory approvals, Niger Uranium intends to verify this estimate by additional exploration in order to upgrade it to a JORC compliant resource estimate. Three of Niger Uranium's six directors are former UraMin senior executives.
Anglo Operations Ltd (AOL) conducted its feasibility study in 1979 on the project and in addition to the resources above, identified a 5 km by 1.3 km zone of mineralization referred to as Henkries North.
Niger Uranium believes it should be able to fast track the Henkries Deposit to production in the medium term, becoming South Africa's first open pit uranium mine with an internal target date of late 2011.
Niger Uranium currently holds eight prospecting licenses in Niger covering a total area of almost 7000 square kilometres.
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