REG - Sunrise Resources - Pioche Sepiolite Project - Update

Sunrise ResourcesAnnouncement

31/10/2025 07:00

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RNS Number : 5850F  Sunrise Resources Plc  31 October 2025

31 October2025

 

SUNRISE RESOURCES PLC

("Sunrise" or the "Company")

 

Pioche Sepiolite Project - Update

 

Following the Company's announcements of 15 April 2025 and 23 July 2025,
Sunrise Resources plc is pleased to provide an update for its Pioche Sepiolite
Project in Nevada, USA, following the completion of a second phase of
developmental testwork.

 

Highlights

 

·    Phase 2 testwork confirms Pioche sepiolite as a suitable gelling clay
to replace Amargosa sepiolite and Florida attapulgite.

 

·    Process breakthrough yielded results comparable to 'gold-standard'
Spanish sepiolite in high-value gelling applications.

 

·    Bench-scale processing of samples being ramped up to provide
processed samples for customer trials.

 

·    Commercial processing routes now being evaluated.

 

 

Commenting today, Executive Chairman Patrick Cheetham said:

 

"Since taking delivery in July of all remaining surface and drill hole samples
collected by Tolsa during their exploration at Pioche, and working with our
partner Tom Powell, we have been continuing our process development testwork,
building on the preliminary results released back in April this year. We are
very pleased to report continuing positive results and a breakthrough in
processing Pioche sepiolite clay that has delivered results comparable to
those obtained with high-grade Spanish sepiolite.

 

"Given that we have not yet been able to test higher-grade Pioche sepiolite
samples, this is a great result. We are now gearing up bench-scale production
of processed sepiolite to service demand from potential customers where, to
date, we have only been able to provide raw clay samples to date."

 

 

Sepiolite is a naturally occurring, fibrous clay mineral (a hydrous magnesium
silicate) that is rarely found in commercial quantities. On the Company's
Pioche Project, sepiolite clays have been shown by drilling and surface
sampling to occur at surface and at shallow depth over at least a 2.6 x 1.3km
area with cumulative thicknesses up to several metres.

 

Sepiolite typically sells in the range US$150-800/ton with specialty surface
treated grades commanding a value over US$1,800/ton.

 

 

 

 

Further information:

 

 Sunrise Resources plc                  Tel: +44 (0)1625 838 884

 Patrick Cheetham, Executive Chairman
                                        Tel: +44 (0)207 628 3396

 Beaumont Cornish Limited

 Nominated Adviser

 James Biddle/Roland Cornish
                                        Tel: +44 (0)207 469 0930

 AlbR Capital Limited

 Broker

 Lucy Williams/Duncan Vasey

Shares in the Company trade on AIM. EPIC: "SRES"

Website: www.sunriseresourcesplc.com (http://www.sunriseresourcesplc.com)

 

Nominated Adviser

Beaumont Cornish Limited ("Beaumont Cornish") is the Company's Nominated
Adviser and is authorised and regulated by the FCA. Beaumont Cornish's
responsibilities as the Company's Nominated Adviser, including a
responsibility to advise and guide the Company on its responsibilities under
the AIM Rules for Companies and AIM Rules for Nominated Advisers, are owed
solely to the London Stock Exchange. Beaumont Cornish is not acting for and
will not be responsible to any other persons for providing protections
afforded to customers of Beaumont Cornish nor for advising them in relation to
the proposed arrangements described in this announcement or any matter
referred to in it.

 

Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to
constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations
(EU) No. 596/2014 which forms part of UK domestic law by virtue of the
European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 ('MAR'). Upon the publication of this
announcement via Regulatory Information Service ('RIS'), this inside
information is now considered to be in the public domain.

 

 

Detailed Information

 

Sepiolite is a naturally occurring, fibrous clay mineral (a hydrous magnesium
silicate) that is rarely found in commercial quantities.

 

Whilst sepiolite has many commercial applications these applications fall into
two main categories - lower value applications that rely on the sorptive
properties of sepiolite (e./g pet litters, animal feeds) and higher value
applications that rely on sepiolite's 'gelling' properties, i.e. its ability
to increase the viscosity of fluids in both fresh and salt water (e.g. in oil
and gas well drilling fluids, paints and coatings, and building products).
Attapulgite clay also serves this market but is mined in northern Florida,
whereas the main oilfield markets are in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.

 

Visible at a microscopic scale, sepiolite clay is comprised of elongated
fibres or ribbons which when dispersed in fluids increase viscosity. Viscosity
is measured in Centipoise (cP),a unit of measurement for dynamic viscosity,
which describes a fluid's resistance to flow. Liquids with higher centipoise
values are thicker and flow more slowly, while those with lower values are
thinner and flow more easily. For reference, water at 20 degrees centigrade
has a viscosity of approximately 1cP, molasses 5-10,000cP.

 

In commercial deposits, the mineral sepiolite occurs in association with other
clay minerals such as saponite, and gangue minerals, such as quartz and
dolomite but in commercial practice it is expensive to separate the sepiolite
so the clay is characterised as either waste, medium, or high grade depending
on the relative proportion of sepiolite, the quality of the contained
sepiolite and the use to which the sepiolite is intended. Generally, Spanish
sepiolite is higher grade and higher quality compared to that currently mined
and used in the USA. The performance of a sepiolite clay can be improved by
applying appropriate mineral processing (non-separation) techniques that
modify the physical properties of the sepiolite.

 

The Company's evaluation to-date has focused on the gelling properties of
Pioche sepiolite and comparison of Pioche samples with commercial reference
samples from the USA and Spain. It has sought to build on testing carried out
by Tolsa on various surface and drill samples as well as the preliminary
testwork reported by the Company in April this year.

 

Tolsa undertook viscosity testing on 293 separate sample of Pioche clay
collected from surface and from drill holes across a wide area of the Pioche
Property using their inhouse testing protocol for freshwater applications. No
testwork was done for saltwater applications as, although a large market in
the USA, this is not a market in their geographical segment.

 

Tolsa's testwork on Pioche clays yielded samples with freshwater viscosities
up to 24,680cP. However, for whatever reason, Tolsa only returned samples to
the Company that had tested up to 11,400cP, the higher grade samples
presumably having been consumed in testwork.

 

The Company's first phase of testwork established that the Pioche sepiolite
"ribbons" were matted and bundled together and this contributed to lower
viscosities but when processed by mechanical shearing the viscosities
increased several- fold due to delamination of the sepiolite ribbons.

 

The second phase of testwork had two objectives. The main objective was to
build on the results of SRM's Phase 1 testing to devise a standardised sample
preparation methodology that gave freshwater viscosity results in line with
Tolsa's own viscosity testing which, when applied to commercial reference
samples, would provide a benchmark against which Tolsa's results could be
evaluated to identify those areas where more detailed drilling might  be
expected to define mineable reserves.

Twelve samples were selected having viscosities between 0 and 11,400cP in
Tolsa's testing (higher grade Pioche samples not being available). After some
experimentation the Company was able to develop a standardised bench scale
process that yielded results comparable to those obtained by Tolsa and
comparable to Amargosa sepiolite ore produced on a commercial basis in Nevada.
One outlier sample tested yielded a viscosity of 24,600cP a result comparable
to that obtained in testing gold-standard Spanish sepiolite.

A second objective was to test the same range of samples for their gelling
effect in saltwater, an important application for drilling through saltwater
formations in oil and gas wells. Tolsa did not evaluate this application. The
Company's testing was carried out in accordance with American Petroleum
Institute procedures and yielded results comparable to those obtained from
Amargosa sepiolite. This underlines the potential for Pioche sepiolite to
replace Amargosa sepiolite where future mining is under regulatory threat.

In the final stages of the Phase 2 testwork, the processing method was
developed further and achieved a significant breakthrough, increasing the
saltwater viscosity in the two samples tested by a factor of 4x, giving
results only seen so far in the Company's testing of Spanish sepiolite.

Given the limitations on samples currently available to the Company, where
some of the highest quality samples based on Tolsa's own testing could not be
tested, this is a very significant result.

Taken together all of the work carried out by the Company continues to
highlight the East Mesa area of the Pioche Property as the prime target for
resource definition and first commercial production. Geological cross sections
are attached.

 

The Company is now in the process of producing on the bench-scale kg
quantities of processed sepiolite for customer testing having only supplied
raw clay products to date.

 

NOTES:

The testwork programme now being reported was designed and executed by Mr. Tom
Powell. Mr. Powell is a degreed chemist and was formerly the General Manager
of the IMV sepiolite mine in the Amargosa Valley, Nevada, USA. Mr. Powell is
an acknowledged expert on specialty clays and sepiolite in particular, and
holds a number of patents on clay products. Mr. Powell holds a 20% economic
interest in the Pioche Sepiolite Project.

 

About the Pioche Sepiolite Project

The Pioche Sepiolite Project claims are 100% owned by SR Minerals Inc.
("SRM"), a Nevada-registered and wholly owned subsidiary of Sunrise Resources
plc. Tom Powell holds a 20% beneficial interest in the Project.

The Project is located in Lincoln County, Nevada, to the northeast of Pioche,
a historic mining town just off US Route 93. The Company's mining claims are
on Federally owned land administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Access
to rail is available at the town of Caliente, 35 miles south of the project
area on Route 93.

Originally documented as a sepiolite occurrence in the 1970s, the occurrence
was relocated by the Company in 2021. In 2022, Tolsa USA, Inc., a US
subsidiary of Spanish sepiolite producer Tolsa SA, entered into an option to
purchase agreement with the Company and explored the property until December
2024 when the option period expired.

Tolsa completed programmes of geological mapping, trenching, auger drilling
and sonic drilling. This identified two (possibly three) sub-horizontal and
extensive sepiolite beds outcropping intermittently along the margins of two
mesas now known as the West and East Mesa areas. A silica rich caprock tops
the sepiolite at the discovery location forming low mesas and flattened
ridgetops.

 

 

About Sepiolite

Sepiolite is a rare form of clay with very few commercial deposits in the
world. It is non-swelling, lightweight and highly porous. It is used
extensively in pet litter, agriculture as a slow-release absorbent and
adsorbent carrier for chemicals and pesticides and in animal feeds as a binder
and carrier for nutrients and growth promoter. It is also a valuable gelling
agent and viscosity modifier in a number of industrial products.

At present, there is only one active sepiolite mining operation in the USA, in
the Amargosa Valley, Nevada, but the future of that operation is limited by
the encroachment of areas of critical environmental concern.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Qualified Person Information:

The information in this release has been compiled and reviewed by Mr. Patrick
Cheetham (MIMMM, MAusIMM) who is a qualified person for the purposes of the
AIM Note for Mining and Oil & Gas Companies. Mr. Cheetham is a Member of
the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining and also a member of the
Australasian Institute of Mining & Metallurgy.

Cautionary Notice

The news release may contain certain statements and expressions of belief,
expectation or opinion which are forward looking statements, and which relate,
inter alia, to the Company's proposed strategy, plans and objectives or to the
expectations or intentions of the Company's directors. Such forward-looking
statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important
factors beyond the control of the Company that could cause the actual
performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from
such forward-looking statements. Accordingly, you should not rely on any
forward-looking statements and save as required by the AIM Rules for Companies
or by law, the Company does not accept any obligation to disseminate any
updates or revisions to such forward-looking statements.

 

 

 

 

 

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