Projects

Ruvuma

The Ruvuma project was acquired in June 2007. The licence area spans some 9,589 sq km predominantly over the Karoo Basin sediments, the same rock formations that host the Mtonya occurrences, Mantra's Nyota deposit and Paladin's Kayelekera deposit 300km to the west in Malawi. The district geology is analogous to that of Kayelekera, Mtonya and Nyota.

Exploration

As part of the Company's 2008 exploration programme, a detailed geological mapping, ground geophysical and geochemical survey was conducted, which returned encouraging results.

At the Foxy Prospect, 19 RC holes were drilled for a total of 1,382 metres. Initial indications from downhole geophysical logging are that a number of holes intersected shallow, low-to-moderate grade uranium mineralisation.

The completion of detailed ground radiometric and spectrometric surveys at Eland led to identifying extensive radiometric anomalism. Field traverses designed to ground-check the 2007 heliborne radiometric ("informal" total count) anomalies were conducted at the south-western extents of the tenement. The traverses included grab and rock samples as well as coarse geologic mapping. This work outlined a distinctive, 300-count per second anomaly (Geogammer total count) extending for 150x30 metres along the northeast slope of the Eland Hill. The anomalous zone is situated along the contact between equigranular syenite and a melange of syenitic rock and felsic gneiss. The south-eastern tip of the anomaly extends well into a zone of syenitic eluvial detritus and soil cover.

Preliminary geological scout maps were generated for both the anomalous area at Eland Hill and along traverses away from it. Reconnaissance traverses to the southwest identified several uranium hotspots associated with nepheline syenite and altered orthogneiss subcrops and boulder floats.

A number of rock chip samples taken from the Eland area returned anomalous uranium, tantalum and niobium values.

This style of Nb-Ta-U mineralisation is strikingly similar to Globe's Kanyika deposit in Malawi some 290 km southwest of Eland and Mantra's Malawian Chikangawa and Chintheche Projects 230 km to the west. It is remarkable that the overall tenor of U3O8 and Ta mineralisation is considerably higher than at the prospects in Malawi.