Uranium juniors merger between Fission, Alpha Minerals creates bigger target – by Peter Koven (September 4, 2013)

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The co-owners of a landmark Saskatchewan uranium discovery are coming together in a deal that they hope will be a precursor to a much bigger sale in the future.

Ever since junior miners Fission Uranium Corp. and Alpha Minerals Inc. started to release spectacular drilling results from their Patterson Lake South (PLS) project last year, investors viewed a merger of the two companies as a logical move. It would give them greater scale, make them more appealing to large investors and create a potential takeover target for a senior producer.

A friendly deal finally arrived on Tuesday, as Fission said it will buy Alpha for $185-million in stock. The move comes after a few large Alpha shareholders approached Fission about putting the two companies together. Each company owns 50% of the PLS project.

“It all started with their shareholders coming to us, and not us coming to them,” Fission chairman and chief executive Dev Randhawa said in an interview. PLS is a very early-stage discovery, but the grades are high and the potential is enormous. It is the most exciting find in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin since Hathor Exploration Ltd. discovered the Roughrider deposit in 2008. Hathor was later sold for $654-million.

Several other junior companies have flocked to the region around the PLS discovery in hopes of repeating Fission and Alpha’s success, creating Saskatchewan’s biggest uranium staking rush in years.

The PLS deposit lies near the western edge of the Athabasca, an area that was largely abandoned by explorers prior to this discovery. Mr. Randhawa said it has an advantage over other Saskatchewan projects because it is at a very shallow depth. That reduces mining costs and risks.

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