Boss Energy has confirmed a nine-year production pathway for its Honeymoon uranium operation in South Australia, with a new feasibility study (NFS) forecasting around 13.8 million pounds of triuranium octoxide production through to the 2034 financial year.
The study has established a wide-spaced in-situ recovery (ISR) wellfield design as the preferred approach for the operation, with the design expected to materially reduce development costs.
Boss said the wider spacing would reduce life-of-mine all-in sustaining costs (AISC) by about $30 per pound on a like-for-like basis compared with applying the original wellfield spacing to the updated Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE).
Boss Energy managing director and CEO Matthew Dusci said the study represented a significant change to Honeymoon’s cost structure.
“86,670 metres of new drilling, commercial ISR operating data, deposit-wide permeability modelling and advanced reactive transport modelling have transformed our understanding of the deposit and how it can be most effectively developed,” Dusci said.
“This work has enabled us to redesign the wellfields around the characteristics of the orebody. The selected wide-spaced design accesses more of the resource with substantially fewer wells and less infrastructure, while increasing lixiviant residence time to support higher PLS grades and improved recoveries.”
The operation is forecast to reach annual production of 1.9 million pounds between FY30 and FY33, with an average life-of-mine C1 cost of $50/lb and AISC of $79/lb.
The study incorporates an updated MRE of 21.4 million tonnes at 440 parts per million triuranium octoxide, containing 20.8 million pounds of uranium metal.
The updated resource represents a 42 per cent decrease in contained uranium compared with the 2019 MRE, while Boss said the wide-spaced wellfield design had enabled the cut-off grade to be reduced from 250ppm to 100ppm, bringing more lower-grade mineralisation into the economic mine plan.
Honeymoon restarted production in April 2024 and has since produced more than 2.3 million pounds of drummed triuranium octoxide.
The NFS also includes the Brooks Dam North domain, which is expected to contribute about 15 per cent of forecast production and requires the planned Honeymoon Mine Extension.
Beyond the current mine plan, Boss has identified a combined 45.1 million pounds of uranium resources at the nearby Jasons Deposit and Gould’s Dam, which are not included in the NFS but could provide a pathway to extend mine life and increase production using Honeymoon’s existing infrastructure.