With uranium prices soaring globally, Toro Energy has reconfirmed its commitment to constructing its Lake Maitland pilot plant to test ores from three uranium-vanadium deposits within a radius of 110km south-west of Wiluna in Western Australia.
The company, which has declared the project an “asset of global significance”, says its recently-commissioned pilot plant will test improved beneficiation and hydrometallurgical circuits that it has developed from its bench-scale research, at closer-to-production scale and as single streams.
Management says ore drawn from its deposits near Wiluna – namely at Lake Way, Centipede-Millipede and the most distant Lake Maitland – will make up what will ultimately become the company’s extended Lake Maitland operation. Its strategy confirmation comes at a time of resurgent uranium prices that have hit 18-year highs.
Toro Energy executive chairman Richard Homsany said: “As Toro continues to advance the Wiluna Uranium Project towards production, the potential value of the project keeps growing, amidst the backdrop of a strengthening global uranium market. The Wiluna Uranium Project is an asset of global significance. Toro remains committed to developing it so that it can be brought into production when government policy and uranium markets align. The pilot plant is an important step towards further demonstrating the potential scale and value of the asset and developing it to production.
Management says the plant will be designed to accept at least 20 tonnes of trial ore feed and process it through two campaigns in each of the beneficiation and hydrometallurgical circuits. It plans to kick off its drilling of source areas to identify suitable batches of trial feed material ready for processing in the second half of the year.
The trials will not only test the feed material, but will also be the first test of the integrated plant itself.
Previously, each element of the circuit had only been run in isolation.
This process is important when commissioning new plant to ensure appropriate feed rates at all circuit input points and water balance are maintained, among many other considerations.
Management expects the new pilot plant will be designed to go beyond its initial planned Lake Maitland operation and also take in its Centipede-Millipede and Lake Way resources, inevitably requiring tweaks to modify the plant to handle feed variations from the three sources.
Toro’s trifecta of Lake Maitland resource areas contain a JORC-standard resource estimate of 52 million tonnes at a grade of 548 parts per million uranium oxide for a total of 62.7 million pounds of contained uranium oxide.
Additionally, the project includes a combined total JORC vanadium resource estimate of 96.3 million tonnes at a grade of 322ppm vanadium pentoxide for a total of 68.3 million pounds.
While the company initially acquired State and Federal project approvals in 2017, it still needs to have further amendments ticked off before it can continue to production. But it says its tenement position has been secured and agreements are in place with the Wiluna populace. The open pit depth is designed to be no greater than 15m, owing to the surficial deposit styles.
Toro also says it has financing options that include three utilities, which comprise Japan Australia Uranium, and Japan’s Itochu Corporation, which combined have the right to acquire up to 35 per cent of the Lake Maitland project for a further payment of US$39.6 million ($A55.6 million).
With the uranium market currently in a steep ascendancy and sitting at about US$102 per pound ($AU135), Toro looks like it has a better opportunity now to get its pilot plant and future development up and running than has been available at any time since mid-2007.
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By Doug Bright
