This was a article on The West Australian paper. Marmota ramps...

This was a article on The West Australian paper.


Marmota ramps up Junction Dam uranium playMatt BirneySPONSOREDThursday, 11 June 2020 5:34PMMatt BirneyMarmota Ltd is set to ramp up its Junction Dam uranium project in South Australia with a strategic review set to unleash the value of the asset. Credit: FileMarmota Ltd is set to ramp up its Junction Dam uranium project in South Australia with a strategic review set to unleash the value of the asset. The move comes on the back of a sharp rise in the price of uranium, with the spot price galloping upwards by nearly 40 per cent since the start of year, lighting a fire under a sector that once produced multi-billion-dollar companies but has been largely dormant for a while now.Marmota Chairman, Dr Colin Rose said: “Marmota has for the first time in more than 5 years started looking again at our uranium assets, which is after all how the company originally started. As we delve into the work of the past, I am finding it to be both exciting and rewarding.”“The purpose, of course, is to unleash the value and potential of the uranium assets for the benefit of the Company and its shareholders, and we are exploring a number of ways to do that, while keeping our focus firmly on our gold discovery at Aurora Tank and production pathway. ”The Junction Dam uranium project is located in South Australia, near the SA-NSW border, around 50 km west of the mining centre of Broken Hill. The project counts the Honeymoon in-situ leach uranium mine as its close neighbour – Honeymoon is one of only four permitted uranium operations in Australia.South Australia is Australia’s premier state for uranium production given its supportive Government legislation. It is largely thought to hold around 25% of the world’s uranium resources in a mix of hard rock and sediment hosted deposits including the Olympic Dam, Four Mile and Honeymoon operations.Marmota owns 100 per cent of the uranium rights at Junction Dam, which boasts an impressive near surface resource of 5.4 million pounds of contained uranium oxide in the paleo-channel deposits similar to those at Honeymoon.The Junction Dam resource is hosted within three distinct deposits named Bridget, Saffron and Yolanda – the resource averages a robust 557 ppm uranium oxide which is a higher grade than its neighbour at Honeymoon (340 ppm) and the famous channel deposits in Namibia, which average around 300 ppm.Prior to Marmota’s pivot away from uranium in 2014, largely due to falling market prices, the company had identified additional high-grade targets within the project area including assays of up to an impressive 8,143 ppm uranium oxide at Saffron. The company has yet to test the extensions to the existing deposits and it has already identified additional targets that may host significant high-grade uranium mineralisation.Marmota has penned an impressive exploration target for the project at an ambitious 22-33 million pounds of uranium oxide at an average grade of between 400 and 700 ppm. If the metallurgy stacks up, Junction Dam could be a game changer for the $46 million market-capped Marmota.The company’s uranium project review comes at a pivotal time in the market with the price of uranium on a tear, having risen from just under A$36 per pound in January to nearly A$50 per pound last month - a rise of close to 40 per cent.The sharp rise in the price of the polarising metal has been driven by a perfect storm of circumstance including increasing demand as the world moves away from fossil fuels. Coupled with the closure and predicted closure of aging mines and restricted supplies from key producing nations such as South Africa, Namibia and Kazakhstan on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic and uranium is enjoying something of a resurgence albeit the price still has a way to go before it becomes commercial.Marmota’s review of Junction Dam is timely for the company and may add another string to its bow. With an established uranium resource, a huge exploration target and high-grade results that have yet to be followed up, this junior explorer might be worth watching over the coming months.Is your ASX listed company doing something interesting?