Rare earth element (REE) mining company Altona Energy plc has taken its projects in East Africa a step further following the granting of a three-year exploration licence.
The company said that Leadway Group Ltd, with which it signed a heads of agreement on 21 September, had been awarded a three-year exploration licence for its tenement EL00115 known as the Nankoma Rare Earths project.
Altona aims to acquire an initial 51% interest in the company (rising to 70%), by the end of November, on successful completion of its current round to raise £500,000. bit.ly/3mzpfb2
Nankoma covers an area of 67.5 km2 and is located some 50 km east of Jinja, which lies 130 km east of Kampala in south-eastern Uganda.
Altona said that the project is an ionic-clay based REE Greenfield site, which shares its northern border with the REE mining projects owned by Ionic Rare Earths Ltd (IRE), which reported a mineral resource estimate of 78.6 Mt @ 840 ppm total rare earth oxide (TREO) on its Makuutu Central Zone (tenement RL1693), to the west of Nankoma, in June 2020.
IRE is currently expanding exploration drilling eastwards and has recently concluded a 68-hole drill programme on the tenement directly north of Nankoma, with the analysis still pending.
Altona added: “Crucially, Ionic Rare Earths Ltd reported high levels of critical rare earth oxides (CREO), at 310 ppm, which include the elements, Neodymium and Praseodymium, two of the REEs which Altona is focused on extracting, due to their demand in many technology and green industries.”
After a successful fundraise, Altona will start generating drill targets using Uganda’s airborne geophysical survey datasets (survey flown in 2006) as well as Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) and multi-spectral satellite imagery, and ground proofing (including preliminary assaying and leach tests).
The company said that scout drilling of the targets would involve about 20 PQ3/HQ3 diamond drilling holes as well as first pass metallurgical testing.
Altona Energy had interests in coal mining for 15 years in southwest Australia before refocusing on rare earths earlier this year.