A decision by Infini Resources (ASX: I88) to send lab-busting uranium assays from its Portland Creek project in Canada back for re-analysis has delivered wild grades and a matching share price hike on the ASX this morning.
With the company’s stock jumping more than 83 per cent – a second big run in as many weeks – management says the soil sampling grades going up to 74,997 parts per million (7.5 per cent) uranium oxide could be the highest ever recorded. Its share price had been sitting as low as 14.5c just a fortnight ago, but hit a high of 90c today as nearly 7.5 million units changed hands in the first three hours of intraday trading.
Infini last week revealed that 17 soil samples had broken the upper limit of detection at the lab, putting the market on edge to see exactly what sort of uranium value was lying within the Portland Creek ground in the Canadian province of Newfoundland. That release triggered an initial 226 per cent share price rise and clearly locked in a new market focus on the company’s operation.
Now, today’s run has meant a more than 520 per cent hike in just 14 days.
Management today confirmed that seven of the 17 soil samples from a prospective strike of more than 100m returned grades of more than 3 per cent uranium oxide. Interestingly, the average background reading in soils is 8ppm, so the peak anomalous sample of 74,997ppm is a staggering 9375 times greater.
These follow-up assay results confirm that the Company has encountered world-class grades of uranium in soil samples at Portland Creek. I am not aware of any other explorers that have returned results close to what we are seeing here in our maiden fieldwork program.
Infini Resources CEO Charles Armstrong
The high-grade samples defined a 235m-by-100m zone coincident with an historic radon gas anomaly. Radon is a gas that has no smell, colour or taste.
The zone at Infini’s Talus prospect remains open to the east and west after 39 samples returned more than 1000ppm uranium oxide, with soil sampling covering only 400m of a prospective 3.2km-long zone defined by historic radiometric data. If the “ore-grade” soil samples continue for the length of the anomaly, the suggestions of a high-grade deposit with significant scale will begin to look more and more likely.
Radon gas surveys have now become the immediate focus for Infini, which intends to continue urgent sampling across two radon gas anomalies that flank the 3.2km-long radiometric anomaly. The two radon gas anomalies are interpreted by management to be connected and together would cover a strike of more than 600m.
Follow-up geophysics from a UAV drone magnetic survey at Talus is now being processed to allow Infini to vector in on any structural controls or primary bedrock source of any potential uranium deposit lurking beneath the surface.
The company’s 100 per cent-owned Portland Creek project covers an area of 149 square kilometres through ancient Precambrian rocks and features the extensive regional uranium anomaly that was identified in the 1970s by a Newfoundland Government stream sediment sampling program.
The company’s priority target areas all lie along the same north-south 3.2km trend that was identified from the 1970s work. The main Talus prospect adjacent to the remarkable soil samples is about 1600m long, with the other two lower-order targets sitting within about 700m of the southern extremity of the main trend.
The word talus implies a form of often coarse erosional cover obscuring in-situ rocks and explains the nature of the undercover uranium target the company is pursuing. Infini will now look to immediately define drill targets for testing and is likely to have a raft of high-priority options.
With the Paris Olympics just 16 days away, it seems suitable to dub Infini’s uranium soil results as the Usain Bolt of discoveries for the element, as they appear to have charged to multiple world records – just like the legendary Jamaican sprinter. The company is now hoping it can replicate the initial success with the drill bit to have it sitting among its high-grade Canadian uranium counterparts at the world-class Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan.
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