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Eclipse Metals (ASX:EPM) is gearing up for new exploration at its manganese and uranium properties with a fundraising drive targeting up to A$970,660 before costs.
The money will be raised via a rights issue at a price of $0.003 per share.
This could result in the issue of about 323.5 million shares. The record date is 11 November 2015.
The majority of funds applied from the raising will be used to further exploration at the Mary Valley manganese project in Queensland and the Liverpool uranium project in the Northern Territory.
This cash injection will follow up recent progress at the Devil’s Elbow area of Liverpool, where access negotiations with the area’s traditional owners and the Northern Land Council have reached an important milestone.
The progress is expected to facilitate an agreement that will allow Eclipse to begin exploration in the area.
No fieldwork has been undertaken at Mary Valley in the past quarter, but Eclipse has been investigating cost-effective ways of using geophysical methods to assess the scale of the project’s magnetite mineralisation ahead of drilling.
About Liverpool
Liverpool is part of the world-class Alligator uranium field.
Previous shallow trenching at Devil’s Elbow has yielded high-grade uranium assays including 3.2% U3O8, 3.7% U3O8, 4.40% U3O8 and 5.8% U3O8 as well as 38.1g/t gold and 28.02g/t palladium.
The prospect is located about 41 kilometres southeast of the worked-out Nabarlek uranium mine which produced 12,000 tonnes of uranium oxide from 568,402 tonnes of ore with a grade of 1.95% U3O8.
An extensive data review earlier this year at the site highlighted strong gravity and radiometric anomalies which remain poorly tested with further areas outlined as standout exploration targets. These include the high-grade trenching areas and areas where rock chips have produced assays as high as 0.762% uranium.
Ground investigation over Devil’s Elbow has also found radioactive volcanic boulders with count rates up to 24,100 counts per second. Samples taken from the boulders assayed as high as 0.33% uranium.
Eclipse has delineated two structural targets which could hold structurally controlled uranium mineralisation including the Hogs Back and Ranger fault zones with 11.2 kilometres of untested strike.
In the southern portion of the tenement, there are strong untested radiometric anomalies with an area of 5 kilometres by 2 kilometres.
About Mary Valley
Historic production at Eclipse’s Mary Valley holdings totals 31,477 tonnes of high-grade manganese ore from about 1915 to 1960, including almost 20,000 tonnes of output at 51% manganese from the project area’s Amamoor No.1 mine.
Historical assays have also indicated that the manganese, iron, silicon and phosphorus levels are all within the direct shipping ore parameters, further confirming the economic potential of standalone mining operations at the site.
The project has 198 square kilometres of favourable lithology within the two exploration licence areas. The limits of all the deposit are not known either along strike or at depth.
Earlier this year, petrophysical testing indicated the presence of primary mineralisation at Amamoor and the project’s Upper Kandanga prospect. Recent rock chip samples collected from the Amamoor workings returned high-grade assays up to 52% manganese. Samples from Upper Kandanga were up to nearly 41% manganese.
Eclipse has mapped the geological control of mineralisation in the area and identified potential for at least 167,000 tonnes of high-grade manganese mineralisation.
Analysis
The new funding effort by Eclipse represents a potential catalyst for newsflow related to the exploration work expected to be financed.
This could in turn add value to the company by helping improve the understanding of the prospective geology already identified at both Liverpool and Mary Valley.
Liverpool includes abundant untested radiometric anomalies which have never been tested and potentially host uranium mineralisation.
Initial exploration has hinted that success at the project could also deliver Eclipse exposure to gold, platinum, palladium and base metal markets as well as the growing uranium space
Mary Valley, meanwhile, offers the company an opportunity to identify additional mineralisation in largely underexplored tenements with high-grade historic production.
Old waste dumps and stockpiles at Mary Valley could provide bulk samples and possibly saleable ore to evaluate potential for full-scale mining.
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- [Editor:Sophie]
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