Itching for a piece of the action in a neodymium mining venture? Head for Angola or, more precisely, to the London Stock Exchange where you can buy shares of Pensana Rare Earths Plc, stock symbol PRE.L.
It’s a long way from being a working a mine yet, more like a prospect, but you can join its Australian developers and the government wealth fund of Angola in ownership. The company’s stock began trading on July 6.
“The US$16 trillion post COVID stimulus programmes are transforming the renewable energy sector, supercharging the demand for critical rare earth magnet metals,” declares Paul Atherley, chairman of the company. “With Angolan presidential approval and financial backing from our major shareholders, the Angola Sovereign Wealth Fund and UK institutional investors, we are on track to bring online the first major rare-earth mine in over a decade to meet the growing demand for the metals critical to the green energy revolution. Our listing in London provides UK investors with an opportunity to gain a direct exposure to the metals critical to the burgeoning EV and offshore wind sectors.”
The group is banking on what it believes is a large, high-grade deposit of neodymium praseodymium (NdPr) located near the surface of its site, known as the Longonjo Project, located in Angola about 315 km inland from the Atlantic Ocean. The deposit is a thick blanket of NdPr mineralization that stretches over 1.5 km and is amenable to relatively inexpensive extraction, says the company. To prove up the project, it has been digging trenches through the area to recover ore samples, as shown in the photo above taken in August 2019.
Its feasibility study envisions open pit mining and two-phase development of a 2 million tons per year processing plant that would produce about 56,000 tons per year of NdPr concentrate. Price tag for the development would be about $190 million and could be accomplished in 14 months from construction to commissioning.
For more info, see www.pensanametals.com.
