Our flagship Vilhelmina shale-hosted uranium project is located within Jämtland and Västerbotten Counties of north-central Sweden. The project is comprised of 7 Exploration Permits covering >42,000Ha in close proximity to District Metals Tåsjö project.
The area was first identified by AB Atomenergi (Swedish Atomic Energy Company) when they discovered anomalous uranium within the phosphoritic sandy-siltstone unit over an area 20-30km x 10km in 1957. From 1961-1964 AB Atomenergi drilled 68 drill holes. Subsequent drilling carried out by Stora Kopparberg AB (7 drill holes), SGU (38 drill holes), and Vattenbyggnadsbyrån (41 drillholes) totalled 8,005m of drilling.
District Metals Tåsjö Project has a non-compliant resource of ~200Mt @ ~200ppm U. This non-compliant resource was defined from ~7,000m of core drilling from drill programs completed by AB Atomenergi; and more recently Mawson Energy and Continental Precious Minerals from 2005-2012. A total of 176 holes were drilled at an average depth of 42m.
Throughout the Vilhelmina Project area, the Alum Shale Formation (dark green) is immediately overlain by the high-interest Greywacke-Shale Group (light blue) that locally hosts an important phosphoritic sandstone unit that is highly concentrated in uranium.
The Swedish Alum Shale Formation is amongst the most uraniferous black shale units in the world. In addition, the Alum Shale Formation is highly enriched in a variety of critical metals, battery metals and agricultural minerals, including vanadium, molybdenum, nickel, zinc, copper, cobalt, graphite, rare earth elements, potash and phosphate (Engström, 2019).
Lecomte et al. (2019) concluded that burial and deformation conditions experienced by the Alum Shale Formation impacted the grade and mineralogy of the uranium mineralisation. In southern Sweden, where the Alum Shale Formation experienced shallow burial, uranium concentrations had no mineralogical expression (Lecomte et al., 2019). In northern Sweden, where our Vilhelmina Project is located, the Alum Shale Formation experienced folding, tectonic duplication and low grade Greenschist metamorphism during the Caledonian Orogeny. This resulted in the remobilisation of uranium to form uraninite
Unique to the Vilhelmina Project area is the local presence of an uraniferous phosphoritic sandstone unit that directly overlies the Alum Shale Formation. Along the eastern margin of the Caledonian Mountains, these two units experienced low-temperature deformation and duplication by “tectonic-thickening”. These processes had a positive effect on both thickening the formation and enriching the grades of uranium and associated critical and battery metals within the phosphoritic sandstone unit and Alum Shale Formation. This was one of the primary reasons that Neu Horizons Uranium targeted the Vilhelmina Project area.
According to Engström (2019), the drill logs and analytical results from historic drill holes that intersected the phosphoritic sandstone unit shows a clear trend of preferential enrichment of uranium and REE’s; whereas vanadium, molybdenum, nickel and copper are typically enriched within the intercalated graphitic shale unit.
Example of a typical drill hole (KRODD07045) through the Tåsjö deposit. Uranium and REE’s are enriched primarily within the phosphate unit, while molybdenum and vanadium are concentrated within the graphitic shale unit.
Uranium values within the Alum Shale Formation are typically around 150ppm, whereas the overlying phosphate unit can often exceed 1,000ppm.