GoviEx Uranium begins 2025 drilling at Muntanga uranium project - ICYMI

GoviEx Uranium Inc (TSX-V:GXU, OTCQB:GVXXF) earlier this week began its 2025 field season at the Muntanga uranium project in Zambia.

CEO Daniel Major joined Proactive to discuss the program, which is moving beyond resource drilling to broader exploration that could significantly enhance the project’s economics.

Proactive: Hello you're watching Proactive, I'm joined by GoviEx Uranium CEO Daniel Major. Daniel, very good to speak with you. And you've just kicked off the 2025 field season at Muntanga. What are the main objectives and how could this campaign improve the project's economics?

Daniel Major: Yeah. I mean, as you know, we were very much focused in the past on resource drilling, getting our feasibility study out, so we could move to the development stage. And while we're waiting for the LOIs all to come through on the debt financing while we're working on the ESIA approval, we felt it was a great opportunity to go back and start exploring on our properties.

We haven't really done that. It's been on resources only, and we can tie that together as well with how can that improve the project? Can we look at increasing the tonnage throughput? Can we increase the life of the mine and the benefits that will come with that? So that's how our targeting went. And I think we're very excited, you know, to really go back and look at what we've got near us.

And, you know, to start with the smaller ones, Muntanga East reached within 4 or 5km of where we intend to design the plant. That material, if it's there—and certainly those drill holes indicate there's something—could come straight through to the plant. Dibbwi is another interesting one. It was one of our satellite deposits. It was not part of the final economics for the feasibility study, but clearly a clear sign that there's something potentially there where radiometric work that followed on from drilling was never followed up.

And then really, the one that our geologist are getting super excited about is Kariba Valley. Where previous drill holes that cover only about 3% of the total license area, which is a mining permit, indicate that the guys drilled fences and left out about a five or six hundred meter gap between the lines. So we'll be putting some holes in there that could give us—geologists are waving some arms at—20 to 30 million pounds with a lot of potential in the whole license area. So very exciting.

What makes the Kariba Valley target so compelling, Daniel? And how confident are you that it could evolve into a game changing discovery?

The geology is completely the same as what we've got now. But we certainly have a reasonable amount of exploration over that property. We see it within our own properties as well. As we move down, the potential for mineralization has been improving. And I just think these initial holes, which are drilled over a 1.5km wide by more than 4.5km, and they haven't even reached the end.

So we don't know how wide this thing is. If you look at the cross-section within our presentation, they finished drilling in ore. They didn't shoot and go deeper. So, you know, there's a lot of potential here on this project. And as I said, it's such a small part of that total license. So this all adds to the overall Muntanga project. And certainly our enthusiasm and excitement for exploring in Zambia for uranium.

The feasibility study already shows a post-tax NPV of $243 million. How could new discoveries shift the scale or financial outlook of the project Daniel?

The two ways we're going to look at this: one, can we make the project bigger? You know, can we put more tonnes through the plant? You know, I think that's doable depending on what we find. That would obviously have economies of scale benefits. We're currently working on de-bottlenecking the project anyway, at the moment, to see what was in the feasibility study, can we make a better focus on it?

Can we reduce the capital if we can make it bigger as well? And obviously our unit costs would naturally come down—both OpEx and CapEx. And then the other thing is, can we extend the life? There is currently a 12-year mine life. If we can get big pounds and we can take that out to even longer, which again improves the economics of the total project.

But with uranium demand rising, Africa is still underexplored. How do you plan to capitalize on your early mover advantage in Zambia's uranium belt?

We are putting in pegging for a whole bunch of licenses across the country already. We've obviously learned a lot from the work that we've just done to go back and look at primary exploration. We have pegged in and put application in. So we're already starting down that process of looking about where else there is. And obviously something like Kariba Valley turns out to be exciting. It will be looking for similar targets across the country.

Quotes have been edited for clarity and style