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urAniuM

Lotus plants seeds

for Kayelekera restart

eith Bowes could not have picked a cused uranium players to tap the market simple exercise to go through.
Kbetter time to be taking the reins at for big licks of equity during the last quar- “Because we have low capital, be-
Lotus Resources Ltd. ter. Others to have raised cash include cause we have the existing infrastructure
A member of the team which conduct- fellow developers Bannerman Resourc- and because we already have material
ed the original due diligence for Lotus es Ltd ($12 million) and Deep Yellow Ltd sitting on the ROM pad, when we make
prior to its acquisition of Paladin Energy ($40.8 million), while Paladin was in the the decision to go we won’t have to do
Ltd’s former Kayelekera uranium mine process of raking in more than $200 mil- large refurbishment or new construction
in Malawi in 2019, Bowes was officially lion at the time of print to fund its long- or anything like that. We can be up and
installed as the company’s new manag- awaited restart of its flagship Langer- running in probably 12-15 months follow-
ing director on February 10 following the Heinrich mine in Namibia. ing that decision to mine.”
resignation of Toronto-based Eduard Bowes said not only had the raising Lotus has earmarked four areas to
Smirnov, who conceded he would not be improved his company’s cash position to deploy funds over the next two years –
able to visit site or his colleagues in Perth about $19 million but it had also initiated ongoing care-and-maintenance costs;
any time soon due to ongoing COVID-19 an important rebuild of the Lotus register. technical studies which will feed into an
travel restrictions. “There were certain companies that optimised feasibility study for the restart;
Bowes steps into the hot seat at Lotus we’ve targeted that we would like to have regional uranium exploration; and devel-
at a time when sentiment is rapidly re- on our register and we very were fortu- opment of a potential rare earths stream Sponsorship and exhibition opportunities now available
turning to the uranium sector which has nate that those came in and were a sig- following some recent soil sampling.
spent the best part of the last decade in nificant part of the book,” Bowes said. Bowes said the company hoped to
the doldrums since the Fukushima disas- Kayelekera was operated by Paladin have finalised the feasibility study by
ter. between 2019 and 2014, producing al- early Q2 2022, incorporating a number
One of his first tasks was pulling to- most 11 mlb of yellowcake before prices of smaller technical studies currently un-
gether a heavily oversubscribed $12.5 became too low to justify further produc- der way, including the potential addition
million placement which all but ensures tion. The project retains an untapped of ore sorting technology which the likes
Lotus is funded for the next two years to 37.5 mlb uranium resource and a glut of of Vimy Resources Ltd, Marenica Energy
progress towards a restart decision on well-maintained infrastructure, including Ltd and Alligator Energy Ltd have previ-
Kayelekera. a 3 mlbpa processing facility. ously tested and found to be beneficial.
“The timing seemed to be right to bring Lotus completed a restart study on “What ore sorting will allow us to do
a more development focus onto the pro- the project late last year which indicated is take some of our lower grade mate-
ject, such that we can get it in a position operations at Kayelekera could be resur- rial that runs at maybe 400 ppm and up-
to hit the button to restart the project as rected for just $US50 million in upfront grade that to 700-800 ppm, which then
soon as the uranium price pops,” Bowes capital. becomes a really high grade feed for the
told Paydirt. Two production scenarios were consid- plant,” he said. “A higher grade feed, of
“We went out for $12.5 million, but ered – 16.4 mlb over eight years or 23.8 course, dilutes all the fixed costs down
I think we were close to $40 million by mlb of 14 years, incorporating treatment and we’ll get our average operating costs
the time we closed the book. And that all of stockpiles from year eight – with esti- down from doing that as well.
happened within a couple of hours. mated C1 cash costs of $US33/lb, based “Whilst we are a proven producer and
“The gap is starting to grow between on average production of 2.4 mlbpa. our product was accepted by all of the
supply and demand, so there’s a realisa- “We are a low capital option,” Bowes conversion facilities, I think Kayelekera
tion that the uranium price has to pop. said. “If you look at some of the green- has a bit of history in terms of people
The question has always been when and field projects out there and what their thinking it’s a high-cost producer, so
I think there’s some consensus amongst needs are, they require hundreds of mil- we’re doing a number of studies now to
most people you speak to that that’s go- lions of dollars to be able to start their address where the key cost drivers are
ing to be towards the end of this year or projects, whereas we’re in the tens of for the project.”
early next year.” millions of dollars, so from a financing
Lotus was one of several African-fo- perspective we think it will be a relatively – Michael Washbourne

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