PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Exploration company Northern Uranium has raised A$9,5-million to drive its uranium and rare-earths programmes in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Under the raising, existing shareholders received entitlements of around 44,5-million shares, or 96% of all shares on offer. The remaining two-million shares, or 4%, will be taken up by the underwriter and lead manager to the issue.

Further, to the amount raised from the rights issue, Northern Uranium received a further A$2,1-million from the conversion of listed options, bringing the total amount raised to A$9,5-million.

“The company is in a very strong cash position, which provides the impetus for aggressive exploration on the company’s Gardiner-Tanami uranium project and the rare-earths projects at John Galt and Browns Range,” said MD George Bauk.

He noted that reverse-circulation drilling was scheduled for several uranium targets at the Gardiner Tanami project, and was expected to start within the next two weeks, with a further programme planned for additional unconformity-type uranium targets in 2011.

At Browns Range, Northern Uranium was planning to continue ground-based reconnaissance exploration and metallurgical testwork in the final quarter of this year, to follow up on the high-grade rare-earths discoveries from previous rock-chip assays.

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