Aura Energy is moving closer to building Mauritania’s first uranium mine after a bankable feasibility study outlined a 500 million dollar valuation for its Tiris project in the Tiris Zemmour region, about 1,100 kilometres northeast of Nouakchott. Construction costs rose 52 percent to 350 million dollars, and the study gives a post tax internal rate of return of 28 percent, 11 percentage points lower than in a 2024 technical report, even though the uranium price assumption rose 12 percent to 90 dollars a pound. Aura attributed the higher costs to more advanced engineering in the process plant and increased reagent consumption.
The orebody itself changed little. Production of 46.1 million pounds of uranium oxide over a 26 year life is essentially unchanged, while proven and probable reserves grew 11 percent to 37.3 million pounds grading 227 parts per million within 74.6 million tonnes. The free dig open pit ore is soft enough to need no drilling, blasting, crushing or grinding, which is the project’s main cost defence.
Financing is the gap. Aura still needs to secure most of the roughly 400 million dollars required to develop Tiris, is in discussions with the United States International Development Finance Corporation for about 150 million to 170 million dollars of senior debt, and has received a non binding fully funded proposal from an unnamed major United States investment fund. A pilot plant replicating the flowsheet starts in November, processing more than 80 tonnes of ore before a final investment decision in December, with construction of about two years and first production possible at the end of 2028.
The market was unmoved. Shares fell 3 percent to a one year low of 7 Australian cents in Sydney on Tuesday, for a market capitalisation of 69.1 million Australian dollars, a fraction of the capital the project needs. Security in the region is managed by the army, which has cleared artisanal miners from a 10 kilometre strip along the Algerian frontier, and local communities will judge the project on water and radiation, a regional security analyst told the Northern Miner.