Two weeks ago, the Neil Biddle-chaired company signed a deal with Patronus Resources to acquire the uranium rights to 1250sqkm of ground across the Pine Creek Orogen for $5.5 million in shares, giving Patronus a 19.6% stake.

The deal, which is subject to shareholder approval next month, will expand Greenvale’s Pine Creek uranium project to 2466sqkm.

The new ground includes the high-grade Thunderball uranium deposit, which was discovered in 2008 and has a historical resource of 829,000 tonnes at 924 parts per million uranium oxide for 1.69 million pounds of contained uranium.

Recent re-assaying and drilling by Patronus delivered ultra high-grade results of 10m at 25,381ppm uranium oxide from 145m; 10m at 12,264ppm uranium oxide from 139m; and 13m at 7045ppm uranium oxide from 135m.

“We were exploring for uranium in the Territory before, but now we’ve got a better project, so it’s been really well received,” Greenvale managing director Alex Cheeseman said.

“As soon as the shareholder vote’s done, and it’s ours, we’ll be hitting the ground immediately, and we’ll stay out in the field until the weather starts to build up, and then we’ll come back and do it all again next year.”

The company has already got to work, completing an airborne magnetics and radiometric survey over Thunderball, with results pending.

Greenvale has also been awarded an NT government grant to support a new airborne electromagnetic survey.

Thunderball already has several permitted drill pads from Patronus’ previous work.

“My team has been briefed that within a week of that shareholder vote being done and the transaction complete, I want two rigs on site, drilling those currently approved pads,” Cheeseman said.

“The idea would be that we would send the rigs into the field, drill what’s already approved, and by the time that drilling is complete, the permitting that would have started now would also be done.

“We want to commit to a good 5000m of drilling over the rest of August, September, and as far into October as we can, until we run the risk of being caught up by the wet weather.”

The company also has existing targets and known prospects to follow up, as well as the new targets expected to be generated from the recent survey.

“We want to ground truth as many of those as we can at the same time, so we’ll be mapping, sampling, and ultimately trying to identify additional drill targets that we would then permit during the wet season and come back to tackle next year,” Cheeseman said.

Uranium support growing

This week, RBC Capital Markets increased its long-term uranium price by 10% to US$110 per pound.

“Policy catalysts are stacking faster than supply can respond,” RBC analyst Alistair Rankin said.

“The US Department of Energy’s US$17.5 billion commitment to fund 10 new AP1000 reactors, Canada’s plan for 10 new reactors by 2040, and accelerating sovereign and hyper-scaler demand are collectively adding demand that a structurally undersupplied market simply cannot absorb.

“Execution risk is pervasive, and new mines take decades to develop. The term market knows this: fixed-price deals are already transacting at US$100/lb while the published US$95/lb indicator lags reality.”

Cheeseman said there had been a lack of uranium exploration and development globally.

“It’s not until really in the last 18-24 months we’ve seen this kind of awakening of new nuclear capability build-out in the US, China, Europe – even the Japanese are turning back on reactors and committing to more reactors at the moment as well,” he said.

“Nuclear is just being seen to have such a huge part to play in the future energy mix, but then nothing’s happening on the on the natural resource side,

“That was kind of what Neil saw when he started looking at uranium assets in early 2024 that this supply crunch was going to happen, and so yeah, like all of those things really come together to not really drive an impetus in exploring in that region.”

Despite uranium and nuclear’s growing recognition, Greenvale’s market capitalisation is still just $20 million.

Greenvale has been out talking to investors since announcing the deal.

“We’ve now got institutional interest, so that’s great just in terms of that step change of broadening the investor pool that will be interested in what we’re doing,” he said.

The company is looking forward to proving up Pine Creek’s potential through the drill bit.

“The opportunity that we’re acquiring is not just a small high-grade deposit – it’s a big portfolio of 30 to 40 targets along a 20km trend, and ideally, four or five of those will turn into 3-4Mlb deposits, and that’s how we cobble them all together into a future economic mine – that’s how I see,” Cheeseman said.

“It’d be great if one of these things turns into an absolute monster.”