Paladin upgrades Manyingee resource, more infill drilling planned

Uranium miner Paladin Energy has reported an updated mineral resource estimate for its Manyingee deposit, in Western Australia, which increased the inferred resource by about 10.2-million pounds.

The Manyingee deposit is now estimated to host about 8.37-million tonnes of indicated resource and 5.4-million tonnes of inferred resource, at a cutoff grade of 850 parts per million for 15.7-million pounds of indicated uranium oxide (U₃O₈) resource and 10.7-million tonnes of inferred resource.

MD John Borshoff told shareholders on Monday that the deposit was earmarked as the next new project development for Paladin, but would not be considered for development until the uranium was sufficiently incentivising.

However, he pointed out that additional infill drilling was planned for later in 2014, which would allow for the conversion of a portion of the current inferred resource into the indicated category.

In addition, the drilling would also be targeted at identifying representative areas of mineralisation suitable for in-situ recovery processing in order to select an ideal location for a field leach trial.

The completion of the field leach trial, after gaining all the necessary approvals, was the next major step in further defining the potential of the Manyingee deposit, said Borshoff.