Welcome to the NWR Aussie Resources Conference. Next up, we have Alligator Energy. The ASX code is AGE. Now, Alligator Energy have four key projects. Three in Australia for uranium, and one energy minerals project in Italy, which fascinates me. Here to talk to us about it today is Mike Meintjes. He is the CFO of Alligator Energy. Mike, over to you. Great to see you. Thanks for joining us on the conference today.
Great. Thanks for the invitation, Kerry, and look forward to providing an update on Alligator Energy and the projects you've just mentioned. Jumping straight into it. Our usual disclaimer that everyone would be familiar with. Briefly I'd like to look at the corporate side of Alligator before we get to the projects. The diagram on the right-hand side really represents that stakeholder perspective drives all of our decision-making and the way we do business here at Alligator. I think adding shareholder value, looking after our employees, would be well understood. From a landowner viewpoint, down at the Samphire project, we have overlapping tenure with the pastoralists that run sheep on the ground, on the land should I say.
We need to work with them through lambing season, through our rehabilitation projects, seed collection to improve the indigenous species on the land there. When it comes to traditional owners, we operate in Arnhem Land and have looked to create mutually beneficial opportunities with the traditional owners there through employment, through training. We'll touch on when we get to our ARUP projects, the recent option agreements that we struck, which we believe is quite innovative and allows participation should a mining project be triggered. Finally, from an environment, I think all companies are conscious of this, using innovation and technology to minimize our environmental impact. Briefly, a company snapshot. AUD 27 million in the bank at 30 June, our last Appendix 5B update.
A market cap in the low AUD 200 million. We do have a leading uranium team across our management, our advisors and our board. Individuals that have discovered, developed, and operated uranium projects. I will just specifically mention a new addition to our team, who's our Chief Operating Officer, Andrea Marsland-Smith, who brings ISR operational experience. We have a partnership with Traxys, and I'll get to that in the next slide. Kerry did mention our three uranium projects with all the tailwinds for uranium and then our energy metals in Italy. Again, strategic minerals is a real flavor given the battery metals focus.
I'll spend most of the presentation talking to our Samphire project, where we've had quite a few developments. Just looking firstly at our locations. The three uranium projects are in Australia in jurisdictions that are favorable for uranium exploration and development. We have a uranium resource down at Samphire. Big Lake is a conceptual model. The Alligator Rivers, where the company takes its name from, we do have a small resource and a number of targets. The strategy of the company is to take the Samphire project through the various evaluation phases. Looking at some test work next year, and then there will be an approvals process.
The objective is to get that project into production in the next coming years. At both the ARUP and the Big Lake projects, we currently have work programs on the go there to identify targets that we'll then be testing through drilling in 2023. In Piedmont, we're looking at a ground EM survey, and we'll update the market as soon as that's mobilized. Adding value at Piedmont, and we continue to explore opportunities to bring a strategic partner into that project. We continue to actively look at other opportunities. You might say we've got enough on our plate, but
We do have advisors to support us and so we continue to look both at uranium opportunities and in this energy mineral space. I mentioned previously Traxys. Traxys is a global commodity trader based in New York. Our strategic relationship enables us to work with them when it comes to marketing uranium from future production through the contracting phase. There is the opportunity to access some project development financing through Traxys. We do involve them in our evaluation of acquisition opportunities. Let's turn to the Samphire project in South Australia, close to infrastructure, Whyalla, a steel town just to the north of us. You can see our two principal deposits on the EL 5926. You've got Blackbush and Plumbush.
Both of them do have historic resource estimates. With the work that Alligator has been doing, and you'll see the various lithologies here within the Blackbush deposit. Our focus has very much turned to the Kanaka Beds or the Kanaka Sands, which host uranium that has been supported through our drilling activities. This lithology or horizon is amenable to ISR or in-situ recovery.
Now just while you say that, Mike, I think it's important for people to realize that the ISR, the in-situ recovery, is a sort of a newer development in the uranium space, and it allows for it to be a lot more environmentally friendly. Would that be correct?
Correct, Kerry. It is a mining technique that is applied both in Kazakhstan and in Wyoming. Here in Australia, Boss Energy with their Honeymoon Deposit has an ISR operation. Excuse me. In fact, Heathgate Resources, which is a privately owned operation. It is, as we see it at Alligator Energy, the way of the future, where environmentally there's a lot less surface disturbance, and you have injection wells and recovery wells, and your footprint is so much smaller.
Thanks.
Good. Just having a look then at the beginning of September, Alligator released its first mineral resource at the Blackbush deposit. We used a cutoff grade of 250 PPM, which is parts per million. An increase from the historic cutoff grade, which was done at 100. We are looking now purely at the Kanaka sands, which are ISR amenable. GBP 14.8 million at an average or a mean grade, excuse me, of 666 PPM and greater confidence. GBP 6 million of the 14.8 and now sits in an indicated JORC mineral resource category, so a high level of confidence.
If one looks at the grade metal curve on the right here, we've been able to improve through the work and the further evaluation our understanding of the Samphire. And identify what is about a 25% increase in the metal content, just in that little area in Blackbush West and Blackbush East that we'll look at in a second. Plenty of opportunity for resource growth. If we flick to the next slide. Very soon, beginning of October, we will be kicking off a 100-hole drilling program at the Blackbush deposit. There are three purposes of this drill program. The first is some infill drilling to bring more of the inferred resource into the indicated category.
That is the yellow boxes on the diagram here. You'll see the paleo channels. This is what we're really looking to chase and understand, 'cause the mineralization has occurred in these paleo channels as the fluids carrying the uranium have flowed through them. The second aim of this drill program is the blue boxes, and that's extension drilling. You can see we're open in most directions here with the extension drilling. Finally, we'll be doing some step-out drilling with the purple boxes here to areas where historical information flags the potential for additional accumulation of uranium.
An exciting drilling program and you'll see here that previous diagram is represented in the green shading with the black outline, being Blackbush West and Blackbush East. That higher resolution is really defined from our drilling. The other channels that are reflected here, these paleo channels, which in most or in certain circumstances could represent where uranium mineralization has redoxed and been distilled. They're not quite as distinct. Alligator did advise the market earlier this month that we'd initiated a high-resolution ground gravity survey.
Initially it's around Blackbush, but then we'll be stepping out to better define these channels and also look at the relationship between Blackbush and the Plumbush deposit where there is a historical estimate. It's done under the old JORC Code, so we're not disclosing the uranium mineralization that was previously advised by Uranium SA. So this does really indicate the district scale that exists at Samphire. Finally with Samphire, we have our work activities through 2022, 2023. I've mentioned and covered the resource update. ANSTO is doing some test work for us on the leaching of the uranium and the ability for it to attach to the ion exchange resins.
Both of those studies will inform and feed into the scoping study that we are planning to finalize and release in the last quarter of this calendar year. You'll see the drilling that I've mentioned, both kicking off in October and then more regionally again in 2023. The ground gravity to improve the resolution on these palaeochannels. Ahead of our field recovery trial, which is a pilot that we'd be running and informs a feasibility study. There are a number of baseline studies. There's community engagement. That's all required to get to a retention lease or license.
Mm
To be able to conduct this field recovery trial. We'll then be looking at the design procurement and working with some of the supply chain issues that a number of developers are facing at the moment. We are still hopeful of construction sometime around the middle of 2023. Operation of this field recovery trial in late 2023. As I said, that then informs a full feasibility study on the project.
Just on that construction timeline there, Mike. 6 months, it seems like it's a pretty tight timeframe for construction.
Yes, Kerry. A good question. This should be seen as a pilot, or it is really a trial of ISR mining over a fairly small pattern. It's not designed to the specs of a big plant that's gonna run for 10 years.
Okay. Good. That's why I was confused. I was like, "That's pretty quick.
Yeah. No, no, wouldn't it be wonderful if you could build one of these in six months?
I thought you had the magic sauce to get things up and running very fast.
Yes. Yes. That's the Samphire project. Really exciting taking it through these various stages of evaluation. I think look out for an update shortly on the ANSTO test work and how we're progressing into that scoping study, and there should also be news flow from our further drilling activities at Samphire. Just conscious of time, I will briefly touch on our other projects where we do have work occurring this year. Firstly the Alligator Rivers uranium project. A number of high-grade deposits there. There's the Ranger mine, which has now been put into care and maintenance or rehabilitation, should I say. There's the very large undeveloped Jabiluka deposit at an average grade of 5,300 PPM.
A significant
Massive
Undeveloped deposit there. Alligator does have a small mineral resource, as I mentioned, at Caramal. 6.5 million lbs at an average of 3,100 PPM. This orangey area here is sandstone cover. In places, it can be as deep as 300 m.
Oh, my goodness.
Consequently, it is expensive country to go and drill. While you can see many indications and intercepts of mineralization here in our Tin Can Creek and Beatrice projects, we've elected to apply for and were granted ground in the north here, which is our Nabarlek North project, which doesn't have the sandstone cover, so we're closer to the unconformity. We're very close to the U40, so it's right on our boundary prospect that had a very good intercept, 6.8 meters at, you know, 6.7% U3O8. So we have recently run an airborne gravity program at Nabarlek North, and we'll be interpreting that data over the coming weeks. At the same time, we're mobilizing an auger and a RAB drilling program there.
This is really to help inform the geology and to do some geochem sampling. We'll be back there then armed with the information, and hopefully some targets for next year to be drilling there. We'll jump quickly. I'm now conscious that I'm running out of time. There are analogies between the Alligator Rivers and the Athabasca Basin in Canada, and this diagram just seeks to represent the fact that with the federal government's Three Mines Policy between mid-1970s and mid-1990s, there was a hiatus of exploration in the area, whereas going gangbusters at the same time in the Athabasca with some big discoveries there. You know, it does highlight the potential for some large discoveries for an explorer that invests the time and understands the geology.
The arrangement that I mentioned with the traditional owners at Nabarlek North does envisage as a one-off option at the time that we make a discovery, we find that to be economic, and we apply for a mining lease for them to partner with us. We do believe that that's the right thing to do, or to at least provide that option. Finally, we have the Big Lake project. Sorry, I shouldn't forget about Piedmont. Big Lake is in the Cooper Basin, analogous with existing world-class ISR fields. Kerry, this is where I mentioned in Kazakhstan, Wyoming, and in Texas, they've used this technique with great success. It is associated with hydrocarbon basins, which is what we've got in the Cooper Basin.
We are of the belief that there are a couple of potential sources of uranium, whether that's leaching out of the hot granites in the Cooper Basin, or through that distal migration in the uranium fluids in those paleo-channels that I mentioned. We've been able to obtain some confidence from an EM survey that we did last year as to the presence of those channels, and that's further supported through some analysis earlier this year on 2D seismic data. With that, you can see these granites across. This is where the Big Lake Project is.
As the header says, we've applied for a number of other tenements here based on our 2D seismic analysis, where we believe there is potential for uranium mineralization.
Okay, Mike.
So we-
We've got about a minute left.
All right.
I want to make sure you get to Piedmont.
Okay, I will do. Sorry, I know you're keen to hear about that. Next steps are to finalize our access agreements with the two indigenous groups, and we hope to be drilling there next year. Finally, Piedmont, and there is just one slide here. A unique geological terrain in the foothills of the Alps, where the two tectonic plates have come together and revealed a bit of the Earth's mantle. The magma there. Showings of nickel, copper, cobalt. Interestingly, all the way through to the end of the Second World War, there are little adits, and there were historic mines here. But since then, there's been no meaningful exploration. We've got about 30 kilometers of mineralized strike along from Legado all the way down here.
Some rock chip sampling that we've done in and around these adits certainly supports the presence of nickel and cobalt, and a little bit of copper as well. Good jurisdiction with critical minerals being a focus in the EU. We will advise the market very shortly. We're looking to mobilize a ground EM survey, which is to look for the underlying conductors. That survey will be up around the Legado prospect, where we do have drill permits. The idea there, Kerry, is to identify some targets to be back next year to go and drill. If time allows, we'll do s ome drone magnetics, as the slide indicates. Sorry I had to rush there at the end, but as you can tell, it's a pretty full story.
Oh
a pretty full playbook that Alligator has at the moment.
Thank you so much, Mike. Mike Meintjes is there, who's the CFO of Alligator Energy. ASX code is AGE. As Mike just said, it's a full dance card, but very exciting times for uranium and new energies. Mike, thanks for joining us at the NWR conference today.
Fantastic. Thanks for the invite, Kerry.