Overview
AuKing’s activities are focussed on the Koongie Park copper/zinc project and the exciting Tanzanian uranium and copper licences. The location of the projects are shown below:
Koongie Park
The Koongie Park copper/zinc project is situated in the highly mineralised Halls Creek Mobile Belt which also hosts the Savannah (Sally Malay) and Copernicus nickel projects, the former Argyle diamond mine and the Nicolsons gold mining operation of Pantoro Limited. Koongie Park is located about 25kms south west of the regional centre of Halls Creek on the Great Northern Highway in north-eastern Western Australia.
AKN has secured an 100% (subject to 1% net smelter royalty) ownership of the Koongie Park project, acquiring this interest under the terms of the Joint Venture with AAR. Prior to that, AAR held full ownership of the project since 2003. The tenure holding comprises an area of more than 500km2 covering over 40kms of the base metals prospective Koongie Park Formation.
Koongie Park has already been the subject of significant exploration drilling and analysis since the 1970’s, often in line with movements in commodity prices. Since its discovery the Koongie Park project has been the subject of over 300 RC and diamond drill holes consisting of more than 60,000m of drilling in total. The predominant focus of drilling has been at the Sandiego and Onedin deposits leading to the release of a positive scoping study by AKN in June 2023.
Tanzania
On 19 October 2022, in a transformational move for the Company, AKN announced the acquisition of 100% interest in six projects in Tanzania.
The tenure areas acquired by AuKing (particularly Mkuju and Manyoni) have either been directly the subject of significant exploration and study activities or areas nearby have been. Prior to the Fukushima disaster in Japan in March 2011 (and the subsequent collapse in uranium price that occurred in the years following), there was a substantial amount of work undertaken in the Mkuju and Manyoni areas as summarised as follows:
Mkuju
This project is situated in southern Tanzania and was the primary focus of exploration and development feasibility studies by then ASX-listed Mantra Resources Limited (MRU). Not long after reporting a resource estimate 108.9Mt @ 422ppm U3O8 (101.4Mlbs contained U3O8) and completion of feasibility studies, MRU announced a A$1.16Bn takeover offer from the Russian group ARMZ. The takeover was completed during 2011.
MRU’s published resource estimate was mostly in respect of the Nyota Project which lays just to the north-west of Mkuju. However, on 22 January 2010 MRU reported the results of certain rock chip, auger and trenching results across areas that are now covered by AuKing’s proposed tenures.
Manyoni/Itigi
This project is situated nearby the central Tanzanian city of Dodoma and on the railway line that runs to the port city of Dar es Salaam. Manyoni was the subject of extensive exploration work undertaken by Uranex NL up until 2011. After publication of a resource estimate for Manyoni to the ASX on 30 June 2010 of 92Mt @144ppm U3O8, UNX identified the potential to significantly increase those resources by further exploration at Manyoni and at the nearby Itigi prospect. As illustrated below, Manyoni occurs as a series of near-surface ancient playa deposits and Itigi carries an intense and extensive radiometric anomaly that is 40km long and 120km wide. The potential future mining conditions at Manyoni are also quite benign – flat terrain, shallow mineralisation and generally free-dig mining.
