Page 49 - pd290-Feb21-mag-web

AFRIcA

Ionic ups its game in Uganda

onic Rare Earths Ltd wasted little time in With licenses secure, Ionic’s immedi- stantial increase.
Isetting itself for a busy 2021, securing re- ate goal is to upgrade and expand the “We are anticipating a material upgrade.
newal of a key licence and increasing the Makuutu resource which currently stands The current resource was derived from
exploration target at its flagship Makuutu at 78.6mt @ 840 ppm TREO. just 900m of drilling covering a 5sq km
rare earths project in the first week of Janu- “Through the last 12 months we have area. We will bring in 4,000m of additional
ary. worked on that potential and have started drilling over a 16sq km area tested. That
The renewal of the retention licence to deliver. Now the project is of sufficient gives an indication of the scale of upgrade
hands Ionic two more years to com- we are looking at. We expect a sub-
plete a mining licence application, stantial increase in resources.”
in accordance with Ugandan min- Assays were still with the lab at time
ing regulations. The renewal came in of print, but Harrison is confident Ionic
conjunction with two new exploration will be able to publish a resource in
licenses, allowing the company to ex- the March quarter.
pand its interests to 37km strike of sed- “That’ll feed into a revision of the
imentary basin which hosts rare earths scoping study which is required given
mineralisation. With the addition of the the increase in the scale and scope of
two further licenses, Ionic expanded the project,” he said.
its exploration target at Makuutu to From there, Ionic plans to launch
240-800mt @ 0.045-0.09% total rare straight into a BFS.
earths oxide (TREO). “We will hopefully complete the
Ionic is earning up to 60% of Maku- scoping study in Q2 and then wrap up
utu, 120km east of the Ugandan a BFS in Q2/Q3 next year,” he said.
capital of Kampala. According to the “Along with the environmental impact
company, the project rates as one of assessment, the BFS will support the
a handful of non-Chinese controlled mining licence application which we
ionic absorption clay heavy rare earths aim to have in by Q3 2022.
deposits in the world. “We are moving at quick speed be-
Ionic absorption clay deposits gen- cause of the simplicity of the project.
erally have lower capex and opex and Makuutu is well serviced by We’ve done the work to understand
produce a higher value product than infrastructure options the scale and scope.”
more readily avail- To aid the move into
able hard rock rare development mode,
earths deposits. Ionic has restructured
Ionic managing di- its board. Tony Rovira
rector Tim Harrison and Brett Dickson have
said the company stepped down, re-
had selected Makuu- placed by Trevor Ben-
tu because of its min- son as non-executive
eralogy. chairman and Brad
“The previous di- Marwood as non-ex-
rectors had experi- ecutive director. Both
ence in rare earths Benson and Marwood
and were fully aware have project develop-
of the strategic im- ment and financing ex-
portance of ionic perience in Africa.
absorption clay de- “It is about that tran-
posits to the global sition from exploration
rare earths markets,” focus to development
Harrison told Paydirt focus,” Harrison said
TV. “They are basi- of the board appoint-
cally the engine room ments. “Trevor helps
to heavy/critical rare us on the corporate
earth supply coming front and Brad brings
out of southern Chi- expertise in mining and
na, but those operations are known to be scale to consider a much larger scope,” project development in Africa. I think that
depleted as a result of over mining and il- Harrison said. complements what I bring to the table.”
legal mining. So, any new deposits around In December, the company completed – Dominic Piper
the world will only become more important a 4,000m drilling programme designed
and will effectively become new sources to provide data for the resource upgrade.
of heavy/critical rare earths.” Harrison is confident it will deliver a sub-

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT FeBRUaRY 2021 Page 49