Junior explorer African Eagle Resources, which listed on Johannesburg’s AltX on Aug 24, called on South African companies that could be interested in partnering it to develop its early-stage uranium prospects, to approach it.

The firm, which had a primary listing on London’s Aim, was already in talks with four international uranium companies to form possible partnerships, chairperson John Park said in an interview in Johannesburg on Monday.

African Eagle was primarily looking to develop gold and copper projects in Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique, and had formed joint ventures with other companies, including Mark Bristow’s Randgold Resources and Freeport-McMoRan.

The UK-based firm has a total of eight projects with uranium potential.

“We would be happy to talk to South African companies,” Park stated.

He explained that he saw “tremendous potential in our gold and copper” projects, and that African Eagle would rather devote its resources to these.

“We don’t want to be uranium explorers and developers,” said Park.

However, he said that the company wanted to “bring forward some of the heat” that was currently in the uranium market, to benefit its shareholders.

Although spot uranium dropped to some $75/lb by the end of September, according to Bloomberg News, after scaling highs of $135/lb in June, it was still many multiples higher than prices below $20/lb earlier in the decade.

Park said that African Eagle was looking at selling stakes in its uranium projects for equity, and then charging a royalty if and when the projects came into production.

“I’ve talked to three or four groups now,” he stated, adding that the response had been good thus far.

He said that African Eagle could offer, over and above the uranium rights, its skills of operating in Zambia and Tanzania.

“We work very well in Zambia and Tanzania, where a lot of companies don’t; they haven’t come up that learning curve,” said Park.

“Equity would offer us exposure to the share price movements that the companies would get,” he noted, adding that it was usually very difficult to sell an early-stage exploration project for straight cash. “Equity would give us a cash equivalent.”

Park went on to say that this was the model that African Eagle was hoping to work with, but that it was still in the early stages.

“We’ve not yet signed anybody up, it’s still very early days,” he stated.

Zambian copper

Meanwhile, African Eagle was looking at advancing its copper projects, located both inside and outside the famed Copperbelt.

Mkushi, its furthest-advanced project was at prefeasibility study stage, and the results of the study were due by the end of October, African Eagle operations director Chris Davies said.

The firm would then release the results “within the next few weeks”.

North of Mkushi, the firm had completed geochemical soil sampling at its recently acquired Mokambo.

A Romanian company had carried out some drilling on the property in the 1970’s, but stopped because of the copper price.

Davies said that the firm would give “serious consideration” to resource drilling at Mokambo, converting the resources to the inferred category.

He added that the project had excellent power, rail, and road infrastructure.

African Eagle also had other copper targets, and was in joint venture with Randgold Resources on its Miyabi gold project in Tanzania.

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