25rd September 2026
THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONTAINS INSIDE INFORMATION
Pensana Plc ("Pensana" or the "Company")
UPDATE ON LONGONJO FINANCING AND COOLA FARM OUT
Further to the recent RNS on the Cascade US$165 million investment with backing
from the State of Qatar and the confirmation of USD$15 million received to date
the Company can advise that construction at the Longonjo mine is now over 30%
complete.
Whilst engagement with Cascade and its backers continues the Company has engaged
with its major shareholders and entered into detailed financing discussions with
a view to bringing the mine through commissioning and into production.
To this end the Company has had successful detailed negotiations with potential
major offtake partners with whom it intends to enter into offtake agreements
when required to support the debt facilities with ABSA and EXIM.
During these ongoing engagements, outstanding detailed construction design
activities, high-cost site activities and long term procurement items have been
ramped down until the financing has been finalised. As a consequence the overall
construction schedule is expected to be extended from the previously announced
2028 to late 2028.
The Company will continue to keep stakeholders fully informed on the financing
and the mine development as information comes to hand.
Longonjo ranks as one of the world's largest undeveloped rare earth mines and as
previously announced the current production plans are based on ore recovered
from the top 30 metres of the orebody. Previous drilling has intersected
mineralisation to a depth of over 100 metres and remains open at depth
highlighting considerable potential to expand resources to support increased
mine life and expand future production with reasonable cost at lower comparative
risk to greenfield options.
In light of this and after reviewing the exploration potential and access
infrastructure costs of the Coola project located 30 km from Longonjo the
company has accepted an exploration farm in offer from ASX listed Tyranna
(ASK:TYX) under which US$2.6 million will be spent over 3 years with a view to
diluting Pensana's interest to 20%. Should there be a successful development of
a mine at Coola the option remains for the mine product to be treated at
Longonjo.
About Pensana
Pensana is developing one of the world's largest and highest-grade magnet metal
rare earth mines which will produce initially 20,000 tpa of a clean high value
MREC including both LREE and HREE. The plan is to expand production to 40,000
tpa of MREC once initial operations have been established.
The Longonjo operation will extract, concentrate, calcine and chemically refine
the free dig material to produce a high-value MREC which will be railed 273
kilometers to the Atlantic port of Lobito for export.
Pensana is looking to establish a world class fully integrated mine-to-magnet
supply chain in partnership with Japanese and U.S. partners and with support
from U.S. Government.
The Longonjo mine is located adjacent to the Lobito rail corridor approximately
60 kilometers west of the provincial capital of Huambo in central Angola.
The project is currently under development, comprises an open pit, concentrator
and recovery plants, tailings storage facility (designed to meet the
requirements of the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management), process
water supply, bulk power supply, mine infrastructure, workshops, offices,
accommodation village, recreational facilities, and other associated
infrastructure.
The information contained within this announcement is considered by the Company
to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse
Regulations (EU) No.596/2014. Upon the publication of this announcement via a
Regulatory Information Service, this inside information will be considered to be
in the public domain. The person responsible for arranging for the release of
this announcement on behalf of the Company is Paul Atherley (Chairman).
-ENDS-
For further information, please contact:
Shareholder/analyst enquiries:
Pensana Plc
Paul Atherley, Chairman
IR@pensana.co.uk
Tim George, Chief Executive Officer
Rob Kaplan, Chief Financial Officer
This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com
https://news.cision.com/pensana-plc/r/update-on-longonjo-financing-and-coola-farm-out,c4400533
