UK firm Lisungwe Mineral Resources reports that it has discovered areas “rich in uranium” in the district of Mangochi, in southern Malawi, in its exploration initiative focusing on radiometric anomalies that were mapped out in a United Nations Development Programme-sponsored airborne survey carried out in 1987.
Lisungwe Mineral Resources Malawi is a subsidiary of the quoted mineral exploration company, Lisungwe plc, of London.
Lisungwe chairperson John Watkins says reconnaissance ground follow-up surveys – using a hand-held spectrometer to a maximum of 155 ppm – have located an area with total count values greater than 2 000 counts a second, with accompanying preliminary uranium values.
“Several zones of anomalous uranium have been identified, the bgraphite crushing production lineest being over a width of 50 m with an average of 100 ppm. Initial field examination of the area suggests that these values may be contained in alluvial deposits derived from granitic bedrock. Values greater than 50 ppm occur over a potential strike length of 3 000 m,” says Watkins.
He states that these preliminary observations are regarded as being “highly encouraging” and will be followed up immediately with a close-spaced ground survey.
Watkins explainsmall scale brazilian crusher manufacturerss that, in the ground survey, target zones will be examined by pit and possibly trench sampling with on-site spectrographic assays for uranium and thorium.
“If warranted, selected samples will be tested by conventional analysis by an accredited laboratory,” says Watkins.
Lisungwe has an exclusive prospecting licence over a 950-km2 area, about 160 km south-east of Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, and about 50 km from a railway line leading to the deeprock and concrete crusher for sale-sea port at Nacala, on the Mozambique coast.
The firm, which is listed on the UK’s Ofex market, is also involved in exploration for gold and platinum-group metals in Malawi.
In a related development, Australian firm Globe Uranium has reported an initial Joint Ore Reserve Committee resource, totalling 56-million tons at its wholly owned multicommodity niobium, uranium, tantalum and zirconium Kanyika project, in central Malawi.
“This resource is a great achievemhow gold floatation mashin worksent. Not only is the size more than double our initial exploration target, but it remains open to the north, the south and at depth.
“The multicommodity aspect of Kanyika is one of its most important features,” says Globe Uranium MD Mark Sumich.
He says the primary commodity – niobium – is mainly used in the steel industry, and its demand has grown 20% a year for the last five years, mainly as a result of the rapid industrialisation of China and India.
He says limestone machinery processing line in italythe other three commodities – uranium, tantalum and zircon– would be produced as credits irrespective of their grade, as the potential mine economics would be based almost entirely on the niobium extraction.
“The high-grade and mostly near-surface component of the resource (14-million tons, or 25% of the 56-million total) lends itself to early opencut mining at a very low strip ratio, thereby reducing a capital payback period.
“This can be critical to securing debt funding for mine development,” explains Sumich, who describes the discovery as “a fantastic exploration success story”.
Sumich says Globe Uranium is pleased that, after acquiring Kanyika as an untested radiometric anomaly two years ago at no cost, it has turned it into a world-class deposit in a short space of time for an investment of only $3-million.
The other uranium project in Malawi is at Kayelekera, in the northern region, where the Aus- tralia- and Namibia-listed Paladin Resources is building a mine that is due to begin production in the first quarter of 2009.