Last month, the stock jumped when former Rio Tinto managing director of battery materials Marnie Finlayson was announced as the new managing director.

Finlayson formally started on Monday, which has coincided with a busy week for DevEx.

On Monday, the company announced the A$7.5 million acquisition of Alligator Energy’s ground in the Alligator Rivers Uranium Province in the Northern Territory, which included a historical resource estimate of 6.5 million pounds of uranium oxide.

It followed the acquisition late last month of a package of tenements in the region from Rio Tinto.

The deals take DevEx’s landholding in the Alligator Rivers province to 9200sqkm, surrounding the historical Nabarlek mine, which produced 24Mlbs at 1.84% uranium oxide.

“The announcement of the Alligator Energy leases in the Northern Territory really fills out that zone and provides a fantastic platform for the exploration team to go and start drilling some very high priority targets,” Finlayson told the Resources Rising Stars Summer Series this week.

DevEx is well-funded to aggressively explore the ground following a heavily oversubscribed A$32 million capital raising this week.

The company will raise up to a further A$3 million via a share purchase placement.

As well as Finlayson’s appointment, DevEx also recently appointed former OreCorp managing director Matt Yates to its board.

DevEx is chaired by Tim Goyder, who is also the company’s largest shareholder with just under 19.6%.

“We’re really here to discover, to develop, to acquire and to operate, and with the great backing of Tim Goyder, who always puts his money where his mouth is,” Finlayson said.

Uranium demand growing

Macquarie expects the uranium price to rise to US$95 per pound next year as demand increases and the supply gap widens, up from around US$76/lb currently.

This week, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission completed its final safety evaluation for TerraPower’s Kemmerer Power Station Unit 1, a small modular reactor, in Wyoming, paving the way for the grant of a construction permit.

The energy required for artificial intelligence data centres is also expected to increase demand.

Finlayson said she was passionate about clean energy and nuclear power.

“The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that nuclear energy will grow by 32% between now and 2050,” she said.

“Actual production of uranium to feed into that power actually plateaus off from 2030 in operating assets, and requires every single, either stated or planned mine, to just even plateau out.

“It’s really important that the groundwork is done now through the drill bit to find those pounds and get them into position where they can be developed in time.”

The right rocks

DevEx’s ground is directly east of two of Australia’s major uranium deposits, the recently closed Ranger mine, which produced 300Mlbs at 0.23% uranium oxide, and Jabiluka, which produced 307Mlbs at 0.55% uranium oxide.

DevEx is chasing unconformity-related uranium deposits.

“Why we’re in the NT is we’re chasing large high-grade uranium deposits that have been made famous by really two basins,” DevEx technical director Brendan Bradley said.

“One is the basin where we are in, the McArthur Basin, but also by the Athabasca Basin.”

The most recent major discovery is NexGen Energy’s Rook I project in Canada’s Athabasca Basin.

Earlier this week, NexGen reported an ultra-high-grade hit of 5.5m at 21.4% uranium oxide, including 0.5m at 74.8% uranium oxide.

While NexGen’s discovery boosted uranium exploration in the Athabascasa, very little exploration has been conducted in the NT.

That’s despite over 700Mlbs being discovered previously.

DevEx has multiple targets to drill in the NT dry season next year.

“Earlier stage, but nonetheless, attractive targets in the right rocks, the right structures, the right opportunity,” Bradley said.

Recent ground-based gravity and surface geochemistry completed over its recently granted Sandfire prospect has identified a priority drill target along the uranium-prospective Angularli Fault.

Sandfire sits around 2.5km along strike from Deep Yellow’s Angularli uranium deposit, which has a resource of 32.9Mlbs at 1.09% uranium oxide.

DevEx has strong relationships with the Traditional Owners and has completed Aboriginal heritage clearance surveys and submitted its application to drill Sandfire.

It is one of many undrilled targets DevEx is aiming to drill next year, bolstered by this week’s capital raising.

“This will allow a platform for our very skilled exploration team to follow their noses in an unconstrained manner as we chase down the next monster,” Finlayson said.

“The next Jabiluka is absolutely what we’re looking for.”