Infini ratchets up exploration across Canadian uranium projects
Infini Resources has ratcheted up exploration activities at its suite of promising Canadian uranium projects. After completing airborne electromagnetic surveys across two recent acquisitions, the company is preparing to test major targets at its flagship Portland Creek project in Newfoundland.
Infini is eagerly anticipating the imminent arrival of phase one drilling results from Portland Creek and preparing to recommence exploration along the prospective Trident Lake fault. The Portland Creek project sits on the 6-kilometre uranium-enriched corridor, which remains largely untested.
Infini expects to kick off its latest program over the next three months, after a temporary pause for seasonal caribou migration. It will test a high-grade soil anomaly within the Trident Lake zone measuring 800 metres by 100m as well as multiple other nearby targets.
Infini also recently completed 2400km line time-domain electromagnetic (TDEM) and magnetic airborne surveys across its newly acquired Boulding Lake and Reynolds Lake uranium projects in the renowned Athabasca region in Saskatchewan, Canada.
It used a new-generation helicopter-borne TDEM system that improves on prior TDEM mineral exploration technology. The new-age system uses a 20m diameter inflatable transmitter loop suspended about 30m below a helicopter, offering improved signal clarity for detection of subtle subsurface features and better resolution of shallow and deeper targets.
Infini has already had a breakthrough at Portland Creek, when soil sampling results last year set the market into a spin. Assay results up to 74,997 parts per million uranium oxide put a rocket under Infini's share price, making it one of last year's big share market winners.
In fact, the mineralisation was so high that the samples exceeded the initial lab's capabilities and Infini needed to send the lab-busting assays to a second lab for testing.
Management says an initial six-hole drilling program at the company's Falls Lake prospect at Portland Creek exhibited encouraging signs, which they believe illustrates the prospect's significant upside potential. The drill program results will help guide an upcoming phase-two diamond drilling program, based on observed geological structures and geochemical assays.
Falls Lake is part of the wider Trident Lake zone, a 6km corridor of anomalous uranium and radon gas identified in soils and lake sediments.
Portland Creek hosts prospective geological indicators, including surface anomalism, favourable structures and widespread hydrothermal alteration.
The company believes its ongoing data-driven approach is delivering drill targets that are adjusted to new geological information, maximising the project's discovery potential.
Infini Resources chief executive officer Rohan Bone said:
'Portland Creek is a rare exploration opportunity, a project which has the potential to host a large-scale uranium system in a tier-one jurisdiction. Weather, slow production rates and wildlife considerations undoubtedly slowed our momentum, but they've done nothing to diminish our confidence in the asset.'
Bone said the company remains fully committed to aggressive exploration with multiple programs planned at Portland Creek and its Athabasca properties in the second half of this year.
The company announced Bone's appointment a few weeks ago. He has a brief to deliver the next phase of growth across the company's portfolio of uranium and lithium projects in Canada and Western Australia. Bone brings 18 years of global experience across multiple mining roles throughout Australia, South East Asia, Canada and Europe.
The upcoming drill program will be managed by the company's recently appointed in-country exploration manager Nick Mitchell.
Infini recently completed the acquisition of two prospective uranium plays in Canada's renowned Athabasca Basin, which are both perched within 100km of several world-class high-grade uranium mines.
The fully-owned Reynolds and Boulding Lake projects comprise a total 931 square kilometres of land, significantly expanding the company's grounds in the highly sought-after and richly endowed 100,000-square-kilometre Athabasca Basin.
The 677-square-kilometre Reynolds project contains reported anomalous uranium in-lake sediments and radiometric anomalies close to the underexplored Needle Falls shear zone.
It is a shallow unconformity-style uranium exploration play in a jurisdiction distinguished by a regional fault, radioactive boulders along trend and numerous surface showings.
The adjacent, 254-square-kilometre Boulding Lake contains a plethora of radioactive boulders. The company says a magnetic low, interpreted as basin sediments, indicates the project offers potential as a primary uranium source.
Boulding Lake lies immediately west of Denison Mines' Johnston Lake uranium project and is close to the globally leading Cigar Lake operating mine.
Cigar Lake's underground mine has a total mineral reserve of 551,400 tonnes at a coffee-spitting grade of 15.87 per cent uranium oxide - about 160,000ppm - for 192.9 million pounds of product.
The nearby high-grade McArthur River mine contains a reserve of 2.49Mt at a solid 6.55 per cent uranium oxide for a massive 359.6M pounds.
United States President Donald Trump recently issued executive orders to expedite the approvals process for projects deemed to contain strategically important critical minerals, including uranium, to fuel the rollout of modular nuclear energy reactors and to safeguard the US's national security. Trump's intervention may prove a major boon for the active Canadian junior uranium explorer, if its exploration activities prove successful.
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