PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-isted Toro Energy has announced a review to identify value opportunities across its Australian uranium portfolio.

The company’s uranium portfolio includes 90.9-million pounds of contained uranium oxide (U₃O₈), with 62.7-million pounds contained within the Wiluna uranium project, in Western Australia, across three deposits.

The uranium U₃O₈ mineralisation across the Wiluna project also contains a vanadium resource of 96.3-million tonnes, at 322 parts per million (ppm) for 68.3-million pounds of contained vanadium oxide.

A further 28.2-million pounds of U₃O₈ is contained in three assets outside of the Wiluna project.

Toro told shareholders on Tuesday that the company was evaluating significant exploration or development opportunities outside of the Wiluna resource base to take advantage of the improving uranium market conditions, and the intellectual property held by the group.

“Toro is aggressively pursuing several cost-effective pathways that it believes can add significant value to its 90.9-million pounds uranium asset portfolio in the near to medium term,” said executive chairperson Richard Homsany.

“Re-engineering and scoping studies completed at the Lake Maitland operation to date have revealed significant optimisation opportunities, and with further work, our team is confident these improvements have potential to be applied across the broader Wiluna uranium project.

“One such potential improvement currently being investigated is the lowering of the optimised mining cut-offs at the Lake Maitland deposit, as a result of improved economics in the proposed new processing flow sheet, resulting in more of the resource being processed over the life of the mine, which could add considerable value.”

Homsany said that Toro’s technical team had identified significant potential to grow the value in its footprint outside of the existing Wiluna resource base, and a key focus would be on assessing exploration potential across the company’s entire uranium portfolio.

“We are also actively testing several priority exploration targets, including nickel targets at Yandal, where a diamond drill programme is currently under way. Toro has a busy pipeline of activity planned across both its uranium portfolio and its emerging Dusty nickel project, in Western Australia, so we look forward to providing further updates on exploration progress.”