Page 52 - pd296-August21-mag-web

AFRIcA DoWn UnDeR PReVIeW

Borshoff at home in namibia

hen it comes to developing project economics detailed in the
Wgreenfields uranium projects, PFS.
Deep Yellow Ltd managing director Resource drilling for the Tumas 3
John Borshoff is only interested in West deposit wrapped last month,
jurisdictions with a storied history of with a resource upgrade expected
building and operating yellowcake at the time of print. Some of the
mines. best intersections from the recent
Borshoff famously led Paladin programme were 9m @ 280 ppm
Energy Ltd through the develop- from 20m and 3m @ 391 ppm from
ment of the Langer Heinrich (Na- 9m, based on a 200 ppm uranium
mibia) and Kayelekera (Malawi) cut-off grade.
mines during the mid-to-late 2000s Drilling has now shifted to Tumas
and is now well on the journey to re- 1 East which is the final deposit in
peating that feat with Deep Yellow Deep Yellow is currently undertaking a DFS on its Tumas uranium the overall DFS resource upgrade
at Tumas, also in Namibia. project, Namibia programme.
Although currently on care-and- Borshoff said completion of the
maintenance, Kayelekera remains Australia, Canada, US, Russia and South DFS by the end of 2022 was timed
the only mine to be developed in a country Africa which have systems at government with when forecasters are anticipating a se-
which did not already have an existing ura- level that understand uranium. And don’t rious uptick in uranium sentiment. To that
nium industry in the past four decades. forget a lot of those developments were end, he is in no rush to enter into any type
The huge challenge that is establishing a done by the Anglos, the JFCs, the Harmo- of sales contract.
new yellowcake operation was highlighted nys, all the big organisations, not by any of “I’m not interested at the moment in visit-
last month when Spain’s Nuclear Safety the juniors.” ing utilities with cap in hand and telling them
Council knocked back ASX-listed Berkeley Borshoff and the expanding Deep Yel- ‘I want this and that’. It’s not the time,” he
Energia Ltd’s application for a construction low team have barely come up for air since said.
permit to develop a uranium concentrate publishing a PFS on Tumas at the start of “I think there’s a bit of complacency out
plant. this year which indicated $US295 million there and the less companies overpromise
Earlier this year, Greenland Minerals was needed to develop a 3 mlbpa opera- on what they can deliver like they do, the
Ltd’s long-held ambition to advance its tion producing yellowcake from an open pit more companies will show [the utilities] that
Kvanefjeld project in the country’s south for $US30.60/lb over an 11.5-year mine life. their production is precious and expensive.
hit a major stumbling block when the newly Key financial estimates in the PFS in- They should be trying to impart the theory
elected Inuit Ataqatigiit party announced it cluded a post-tax NPV of $US207 million, of scarcity rather than just talking about
was standing firm on its anti-nuclear po- shortage.”
sition and would not approve any form of Deep Yellow has also boosted the ca-
uranium mining. pabilities of its board and management
Namibia on the other hand is an estab- as it moves closer to development of Tu-
lished uranium nation, headlined by the mas. These include the appointments of
large Rössing and Husab mines. For that former Paladin executive Andrew Mirco
very reason, Borshoff has full confidence as head of business development and
there will be no jurisdictional hurdles in ex-Rio Tinto Iron Ore boss Chris Salis-
front of Deep Yellow as it seeks to put Tu- bury as chairman.
mas into production in the coming years. “Behind the scenes we have been
“It is a huge job and you only realise building up the team in anticipation of
how huge it is when you consider that where you’re going,” Borshoff said. “In
Paladin is the only company to have a lot of those things you need to park
developed a uranium mine in a country people into places before the event to
that had no uranium experience, and that John Borshoff get them working in a team environment.
country – Malawi – also had no mining People are the main game here, they are
experience,” he told Paydirt. the essential ingredient to get where we
“You have to devote 30% of your man- IRR of 21.2% and total gross revenue of want to go as a company.”
agement horsepower to purely educating $US1.96 billion. Project payback occurs Deep Yellow is well funded for its next
the other side, bringing together the IAEA within four years of first production. phase of growth, having raised $40.8 mil-
[International Atomic Energy Agency] and Following the PFS, Deep Yellow immedi- lion via a placement earlier this year and re-
government offices, working through how ately launched into a DFS which it hopes cently topped up that war chest with a heav-
they regulate, what you need to do to sign to have completed by the end of next year. ily oversubscribed SPP which pocketed a
up and agree to sales contracts. A key aim of the study is to increase mine further $2 million.
“Every other new uranium mine in the last life to 20 years, with only 50% of the total
40 years has been built in jurisdictions like resources at Tumas used to calculate the – Michael Washbourne

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