NYSE American-listed Uranium Energy Corp (UEC) announced on Monday its acquisition of Rio Tinto's Wyoming assets, which include the Sweetwater plant and a portfolio of mining projects, for $175-million.

President and CEO Amir Adnani hailed Rio Tinto’s fully licensed uranium assets as “highly sought after”. He said that, with the acquisition, UEC was building on its transformative purchase of Uranium One Americas in 2021, which expanded its holdings in Wyoming’s Great Divide basin.

“We recognised early on that there are meaningful development synergies with the Rio Tinto assets, particularly the Sweetwater plant,” said Adnani.

The acquisition will establish UEC’s third hub-and-spoke production platform.

The Rio Tinto assets will bolster UEC’s resources by about 175-million pounds, with about half of these amenable to in-situ recovery (ISR) mining methods. The company plans to prioritise ISR-amenable resources for development and near-term production, while conventional resources will provide flexibility for future production growth.

The 3 000 t/d Sweetwater plant, which has a licensed capacity of 4.1-million pounds a year, can be adapted for recovery of uranium from loaded resins produced by ISR operations. This provides UEC with production flexibility for both ISR and conventional mining.

Further, the Rio Tinto assets will add about 53 000 acres of land for future exploration along with an extensive geological database gathered from more than 6.1-million feet of drilling.Combined with UEC’s existing 54 615 acres of mining rights in the Great Divide basin, this will establish a portfolio of about 108 000 acres of mining and exploration prospects.

Donna Wichers, UEC VP of Wyoming operations, noted that, in her 46 years of operating experience in Wyoming, she has never seen such a large portfolio of assets consolidated with one company.

The transaction comes as the uranium market is witnessing significant momentum.

Adnani pointed to “unprecedented global growth in nuclear energy and demand for uranium”, citing the recently proposed Three Mile Island restart in support of Microsoft’s AI growth.

“The Russian uranium ban and recent comments by Russian government officials regarding restricting future uranium exports to the West underscore the critical importance of maintaining reliable domestic supply chains to power our growing requirements for clean baseload energy. With our fourth acquisition since 2021, UEC is continuing to execute towards building the premier and fastest growing North American uranium company.”