Although a deal to get CGN Mining onto the share register took around 18 months to complete, it has been business as usual for Fission Uranium since the Chinese company sealed the deal, CEO Dev Randhawa told Mining Journal.
Questioned on the sidelines of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada annual conference in Toronto about what caveats the C$82 million (US$58 million) deal came with, Randhawa said the only restriction was the money was spent at the PLS uranium project in Canada’s Athabasca Basin.
The deal, which saw CGN take a 19.9% stake in Fission along with at least 20% of offtake from the project, was completed in late-January. The investment came only a few months after a failed merger with fellow uranium company, Denison Mines.
The hands-off approach from its biggest shareholder is, so far, paying off. The start of the company’s 2016 winter drill programme, designed to test targets at shallow depths, has already led to the discovery of R840W zone with a 42m-wide mineralised intersection. This included a continuous 2m interval with more than 10,000 counts per second radioactivity. R840W is located 135m west of the R600W prospect.
The discovery of this hole led to the company re-jigging its winter drill programme and increasing its drill budget by $740,000 for 1,200m of extra drilling in four holes at R840W.
While the company is busy exploring for shallow mineralisation at PLS to potentially lower the capital required to access the high-grade Triple R deposit, it is still courting interest from potential investors, according to Randhawa.
Other large players have been talking to Fission about taking strategic stakes in the company, which may be accompanied by off-take pacts, he said.
The money from the CGN investment meant the Toronto-listed company could negotiate harder, though. “I don’t need the money, which gives me leverage,” he said.
The potential for this interest turning into deals will also be helped by the publication of NexGen Energy’s maiden resource at its Arrow deposit, which also sits on the western side of the Athabasca Basin.
On Friday, the exploration company revealed a 201.9 million pound uranium oxide inferred resource at Arrow, with an average grade of 2.63% uranium oxide. Within this was a higher-grade core of 120.5MIb, grading 13.26% uranium oxide.
Randhawa said the publication of such a number, on top of more than 100MIb of mostly indicated high-grade resources already defined at Triple R, could further improve the business case for a uranium mill being built on the western side of the basin, which currently lacks processing facilities.