Pilot Plant for Wiluna Uranium Project Development

Toro Energy Limited (ASX: TOE) (‘the Company’ or ‘Toro’) is pleased to announce that the Company is advancing the design phase of its beneficiation and hydrometallurgical pilot plant in line with plans to begin its operation in the second half of 2024.

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Design phase for the pilot plant commissioned by Toro continues on-track.
Pilot plant will test the improved beneficiation and hydrometallurgical circuit developed by Toro over recent years from bench scale research at a closer to production scale and as single streams.Pilot plant will test potential ore from the three uranium-vanadium deposits that Toro believes will make up an extended Lake Maitland operation – these include Lake Maitland, Lake Way and Centipede-Millipede.
The pilot plant will be equipped to take at least 20 dry tonnes of potential ore through two campaigns of testing the beneficiation circuit and two campaigns of testing the hydrometallurgical circuit.Toro will proceed to planning the drilling required to collect the bulk ore (potential) samples ready for piloting early in the second half of 2024.Refresh and update of Lake Maitland Scoping Study (first completed in 2022) currently underway to evaluate financial outcomes using the latest more favourable commodity pricing and exchange rate guidance.

Commenting on the update Toro’s Executive Chairman, Richard Homsany, said:

“As Toro continues to advance the Wiluna Uranium Project towards production, the potential value of the Project, amidst the backdrop of a strengthening global uranium market, keeps growing. The Wiluna Uranium Project is an asset of global significance. Toro remains committed to developing the asset so that it can be brought into production when government policy and uranium markets align. The pilot plant is an important step towards further demonstrating the potential scale and value of this asset, and developing it to production.”

The pilot plant will test the entirety of the successful bench scale research completed by Toro do date at a closer to production scale. The pilot plant will also test all of the components of the newly proposed processing circuit that were tested successfully on an individual basis, within a production flow stream for the first time.

Importantly, the pilot plant will be designed to go beyond the Lake Maitland stand-alone operation and assume an extended mining operation to the Lake Way and Centipede-Millipede deposits (see Figure 1). So, in addition to potential bulk ore from Lake Maitland, the plant will be testing the new processing technique on potential bulk ore from Centipede-Millipede as well as Lake Way. The pilot plant will be equipped to take at least 20 dry tonnes of potential ore through two campaigns of testing, both on the proposed beneficiation circuit and the proposed hydrometallurgical circuit. The plant will be constructed, commissioned and operated at Strategic Metallurgy’s facility in Perth. A block flow diagram of the proposed pilot plant is presented in Figure 2.

Toro will proceed to plan the drilling required to collect the bulk ore (potential) samples ready for piloting early in the second half of 2024, after design and construction of the plant.

Figure 1: Wiluna Uranium Project

Figure 2: Block flow diagram (current) of the pilot plant planned for bulk testing of potential ore from Toro’s Lake Maitland, Lake Way and Centipede-Millipede deposits.

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