First Uranium Resources, Vancouver, B.C., on Aug. 18 reported that it has taken a 17% equity stake in the Diamond Creek organic phosphate rock mine southeast of Salt Lake City, Utah.
The mine is expected to produce 48,000 mt/y in year five, according to majority owner London-based Keras Resources PLC, which is currently reporting monthly sales of about 500 mt, with firm orders for the rest of the quarter. The product is processed at its facility near Spanish Fork.
The project has received organic certification by all three key certification agencies, and as a direct shipping ore (DSO) requires no chemical upgrade process. Keras said the product has in-situ grade of ~28% P2O5, low heavy metal impurities, and significantly higher available phosphate than any other organic rock phosphate in North America. Keras said the project’s premium product can be priced at a competitive level to gain market share, and that it has a modest target of 14% of the North American market in five years.
In the meantime, First Uranium’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Southwind Corp., is conducting a coring campaign in northern Arkansas where it holds agreements on over 1,300 acres, which it said is mostly underlain by a phosphate deposit with strong rare earth element enrichment. It said NI-43-101 Technical Report, undertaken in 2020, based on the current sample assays, local geology, and historical research, has indicated potential in the Southwind holdings of up to 28 million mt of phosphate ore.
Southwind has also been working with a specialist chemical company on the extraction of the rare earth elements from the raw ore using proprietary chelating polymers, and the initial laboratory results are “highly encouraging” for the development of a beneficiation process to extract almost all of the rare earth content early in the phosphate processing, the company noted.
The company also said that it recently decided to conserve cash and reduce the total planned Southwind exploration expenditures due to market conditions. It added that these market conditions have brought multiple new attractive opportunities, which are under consideration.
“We are excited to get drilling at Southwind to test zones of interest,” said First Uranium CEO Robert Debeau. “In parallel, we are delighted at the opportunities that are being presented to us, and we’re examining these opportunities carefully.”