2023 Drilling Program Underway

Elevate Uranium Limited (“Elevate Uranium”, or the “Company”) (ASX:EL8) (OTCQX:ELVUF) is pleased to provide the market with an update on the continuing success of its drilling programs at the Koppies Project in Namibia and to advise that the 2023 drilling program has commenced.

Highlights:

• Latest drilling results indicate:
  
  • Koppies 2 now connects with Koppies 4
  • Koppies 1 is now considered likely to connect with Koppies 2
  • Most likely Koppies 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all connected, for an aggregate length of 20 km
• Two drill rigs have recommenced drilling at Koppies after the Christmas / New Year break

• Mineralisation identified south of Koppies 2, indicates that Koppies 2 connects with Koppies 4,
  
• Mineralisation identified between Koppies 1 and 2, indicates that these two areas are also likely connected,
• The continuity between these areas reinforces the likelihood that the Koppies mineralised area has an aggregate length of 20 km.

Elevate Uranium’s Managing Director, Murray Hill, commented:

“The latest drill results which identify mineralisation south of Koppies 2, indicates that Koppies 2 connects with Koppies 4 and further suggests that the mineralisation extends the full north-south extent of the Koppies tenement. We have now demonstrated that mineralisation is likely continuous between all four zones of the Koppies project extending for a strike length of 20 km and up to 4 km in width.

Drilling has now recommenced after the Christmas / New Year break, with two drill rigs operating in the greater Koppies area to further locate and define the uranium mineralisation. We expect that the drilling programs to be undertaken in 2023 will further define and consolidate the extent of the greater Koppies area.”

Exploration Summary and Updated Geological Model

Estimation of the JORC (2012) Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate of 20.3 million pounds eU3O8 at Koppies 1 and 2, and subsequent discovery of mineralisation extensions at Koppies 3 and 4, have been vital in improving the geological understanding of the Koppies Project. On a regional scale, aerial satellite imagery clearly shows a strong northeast-southwest (NE/SW) set of lineaments, supported by regional airborne magnetic survey data. Field observations and geological mapping confirm these rocks to be the Damara Group schists. Traversing from west to east at Koppies, there is a transition from schist to the Donkerhoek Granite. Rocks within the transition zone are historically mapped as either granite with schist inclusions or schists with granite inclusions. This description can be simplified with the label of “migmatite”, which is strongly indicative of shearing occurring at the contact between a younger intrusive granite batholith and the older, surrounding, metamorphic schists. As the batholith has intruded into the crust, heat from the magma will have partially melted the immediate surrounding country rocks, while more brittle lithologies will crack under the pressure forming faults and fractures of various scales. The combined heat, faulting and shearing of these rocks is likely to have served as pathways for later fluid movement of mineralisation into the overlying sediments once regional tectonism ceased, resulting in the basement-hosted mineralisation. Younger surface mineralisation is likely to have been formed from a combination of mobilisation of uranium from basement lithologies and lateral flow through surface drainage (from “hot” uranium-rich granite outcrops) into the overlying channel fill and evaporitic calcretes.

Incorporating regional-scale airborne radiometrics data reveals a strong correlation between the position of this structural transition zone and moderate to strong anomalism on the uranium radiometrics channel. Uranium grades returned from the 2022 Koppies 3 drill campaigns confirmed that these radiometric anomalies are coincident with uranium mineralisation. Additionally, in a sedimentary setting, uranium mineralisation is known to have a “pinch-and-swell” appearance, both laterally and vertically, dependent on the varying permeabilities and porosities of the host sediments through which the uraniferous fluids flow (in this case, within a palaeochannel). Underlying structures in the basement below the mineralised palaeochannels can also greatly influence the permeabilities and porosities of the overlying channel fill as tectonism is reactivated over geological time.

Using the derived exploration model here, it therefore becomes apparent that the uranium mineralisation identified at Koppies 2 should logically extend through into, and connect with, the uranium mineralisation discovered at Koppies 4. The radiometric anomalism remains consistently coincident with the mapped position of the migmatite/shear zone between Koppies 2 and Koppies 4, which has been corroborated by uranium grades returned from the latest drilling. The “pinch-and-swell” aspect of palaeochannels is interpreted to continue between these two domains and appears to continue to the southwest of Koppies, roughly following the position of the migmatite/shear zone.

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