Häggån Project
Ownership: 100% Aura Aura’s wholly owned Häggån Project covers 110 square kilometres in the Storsjön District in Sweden. The first uranium operation from the Alum Shale began at Kvarntorp in southern Sweden in 1965. The Häggån Project forms part of a large uranium field in Central Sweden. The uranium occurs with molybdenum, nickel, vanadium and zinc in black shales. The shales form a near continuous sheet throughout the section of the project that Aura drilled in its 2008 -2011 programmes, with thicknesses ranging between 20 metres to more than 250 metres.
A Scoping Study on the Häggån Project was completed in February 2012 by independent consultants RMDSTEM Limited and examined a range of heap leach options with incredibly positive results. The bacterial heap leach option showed a robust project with low capital costs relative to cash flow generated.
An update to the Scoping Study in May 2012 placed the Project in the top five current and planned uranium producing operations. Aura is now focusing on moving the project into pre-feasibility. Click here to read more about the updated scoping study results.
In August 2012, independent resource consultants Hellman & Schofield Pty Ltd established an upgrade to the JORC inferred resource at Häggån from 630 to 800 million pounds of uranium at 100ppm cut-off. This resource, for the first time, includes mineralisation in the separate Marby permit and places Häggån in the top two largest undeveloped uranium resources in the world, with significant potential for further increases to the resource.
Aura has received exceptional results from two stages of bioheap leaching testwork, with tests indicating up to 85% uranium extraction, as well as 58% nickel and 18% molybdenum. Click here to view the bio-heap leaching process.
Bioheap leaching has demonstrated value at the Talvivaara nickel copper mine in Finland. Talvivaara is also based on shales and recovers uranium as a by-product from 17ppm uranium ore through bioheap leaching.
Gresham Advisory Partners Limited was appointed as a corporate advisor to the company in May 2012 to assist in the consideration of opportunities for Häggån and to maximise shareholder value.
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