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Rossing uranium looks to expansion
Brendan Ryan
Posted: Fri, 07 Nov 2008
[miningmx.com] -- Rossing Uranium should produce 4,000 tonnes of uranium oxide this year – the first time it has reached this level since 1990 – and is looking to both expand its production further and extend its economic life.
In a presentation to financial media at the mine, situated near Swakopmund in Namibia, Rossing MD Mike Leech said the existing open pit mine was being expanded through “push backs” in two areas at present with another two areas being evaluated.
Rossing management was also looking at opening up satellite pits within the existing mining lease as well as the introduction of a heap leaching facility to treat lower grade ore than the current processing plant could handle.
Testwork was currently being carried out to evaluate the recovery efficiency of the proposed heap-leaching treatment process. If it goes ahead, the heap leach pad to be built will
be up to 2kms long and 250m wide.
Leech said Rossing’s life of mine had been extended to 2021 at a forecast production of around 4,000t/year of uranium oxide although the “nameplate” production capacity of the mine would be 4,500t/year from 2012.
However, management was looking to push annual production to 5,500t/year from 2012 although the ore reserves to support these plans had not yet been defined.
Rossing is a low-grade, low cost operation and chief financial officer Peter Carlson said one of the driving motivations to increase production was to keep costs under control.
“About 70% of our costs are fixed so the more we produce the lower will be the unit cost of our production,“ he said.
Rossing is also carrying out a feasibility study on construction of its own sulphuric acid plant to replace imported sulphuric acid which is a major cost item in the uranium recovery process.
The study will be completed by December
this year and, if the plant goes ahead, it will produce 1,200t/day of sulphuric acid. The acid plant would also generate 14MW of power of which 9.5MW would be over and above the plant’s own requirements and could be used by Rossing’s other operations.
Leech declined to give details of Rossing’s operating costs and the expected reduction in costs from introducing the heap leaching operation which could add 1,000t to Rossing’s annual output.
Leech also declined to give the “cut off” grade for the lower-grade material that could be treated through heap leaching. He commented, “we cannot give those cut-off grades until we have the expected recovery rates from the heap leach plant locked down.”
Andre Genis, GM projects, said Rossing’s focus was on expanding through brownfields developments within its existing mining lease in which there were a number of prospects.
One of them was the SK4 satellite deposit which was estimated to contain some 2,000t
of uranium oxide and could be mined as a small pit.
The plan was to mine it in such as way that its production would be phased in and blended with production from the existing open pit mine.
There are a number of independent mining companies looking at possible uranium projects immediately adjacent Rossing’s mining lease area.
“We have had some approaches from our neighbours and there is certainly a possibility of getting extra projects from the people around us. Our advantages are that we have a plant that is in operation and a lot of experience,” Genis said.
Leech declined to provide information on the prices at which Rossing sold its uranium although he stressed the “long-term nature” of Rossing’s supply contracts.
“When someone builds a nuclear power station that is going operate for 60 to 80 years then what they want is reliable long-term supply of uranium.
“Rossing is a reliable, long-term supplier of uranium. We
have customers who have been with us since we started up in 1976. In a typical year we would sell 100% of our production on long-term contract.
“Currently, we are well contracted on sales out to 2015 but we have not yet contracted to sell the extra production we expect will come from the heap leach operation,” Leech said.
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