GAINING TRACTION Uranium continues to offer value and gain traction in certain regions
Canadian mineral resources company GoviEx and the government of Niger have agreed on a framework to jointly develop GoviEx’s flagship Madaouela uranium project.
The project is situated 9 km south-east of the mining town of Arlit, in the Agadez region. The Madaouela project tenement land surface is about 1 596 km2.
The Niger government will acquire a 10% stake in the Madaouela project for $14.5-million and has agreed to expand the mining permit to include an additional 5.96-million pounds of measured and indicated resources of uranium oxide. The surrounding Madaouela exploration permits will be renewed for a further nine years.
GoviEx CEO Daniel Major says the main priority for the company’s ongoing feasibility study will be to reduce the operating and capital costs forecast for the project, which has yielded constructive results to date.
“Our focus is getting that project to go ahead. We believe in the uranium market and we think that it will continue to gather strength in the second half of this year. On that basis, we see GoviEx’s continued strategy for the optimisation of the project also coming to fruition later this year.”
While the company continues to report on its other projects, such as the mine-permitted Mutanga uranium project and the Falea uranium/silver/copper project, its main focus will be Madaouela, where GoviEx has positioned itself to be a leading uranium producer.
“We do need a better uranium price than current, but the outlook for uranium is very positive and we are doing everything we can to reduce the cost on our projects to ensure that we reduce the level of the uranium price required to justify construction of the project,” says Major.
While uranium continues to offer value and gain traction in certain regions, gold and copper remain key commodities worldwide.
Access to capital is the main challenge for junior miners, but junior mining in general is in a good space, with the commodity market currently in a “bullish period”, he asserts.
“Juniors are always willing to take more risks, whereas senior companies would rather not. Juniors have always been the starting point in terms of looking for opportunities and as they develop, the bigger companies will follow suit.”