Altona upbeat as planned Leadway investment gets exploration licence

Rare earth elements mining exploration company Altona Energy announced on Thursday that Leadway Group has been granted a three-year exploration licence for its tenement ‘EL00115’, known as the Nankoma Rare Earths Project.

The AIM-traded firm said the tenement covers an area of 67.5 square kilometres, and is located about 50 kilometres east of Jinja, which is 130 kilometres east of Kampala in south eastern Uganda.

Altona signed heads of agreement with Leadway on 21 September, to acquire an initial 51% interest in the company, rising to 70%, which it expected to complete on or around the end of November, on successful completion of its current round of funding.

The board described the Nankoma Rare Earths Project as an ionic-clay-based rare earth elements greenfield site, which shared its northern border with the rare earth mining projects owned by the ASX-listed Ionic Rare Earths, which reported a mineral resource estimate of 78.6 million tonnes at 840 parts per million of total rare earth oxide on its Makuutu Central Zone, tenement RL1693, to the west of Nankoma, in June.

Altona said Ionic Rare Earths was currently expanding exploration drilling eastwards, and recently finished a 68-hole drill programme on the tenement directly north of Nankoma, with the analysis pending.

“Crucially, Ionic Rare Earths reported high levels of critical rare earth oxides at 310 parts per million, which include the elements neodymium and praseodymium - two of the rare earth elements which Altona is focused on extracting, due to their demand in many technology and green industries,” the board said in its statement.

“Altona will embark on drilling target generation using Uganda’s airborne geophysical survey datasets, survey flown in 2006, as well as shuttle radar topography mission and multi-spectral satellite imagery, and ground proofing, including preliminary assaying and leach tests.

“Scout drilling of the targets will involve about 20 diamond drilling holes, as well as first pass metallurgical testing.”

Altona said that work would begin after a successful fund raise, which was currently in progress on NR Private Market.