
Greg Bittar
CEO: Lotus Resources
‘Kayelekera is a major mine for Malawi and there is a lot of enthusiasm and high expectations on what it can produce’
WAS it prescience or good luck that drew Lotus Resources to buy the mothballed Kayelekera uranium mine well before the price for the mineral started its remarkable recovery? Whichever the case, the Australian firm is in a big hurry to bring the mine back into production, a job that falls to Bittar, appointed in November. He has targeted production by the third quarter at a capital cost of only $50m. That sounds low but it’s worth pointing out that this is a brownfields project having been previously owned by Paladin Energy.
Paladin had sunk $200m into Kayelekera before suspending production in 2014 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster three years earlier. Bittar says that based on current resources, Kayelekera will produce 20 million pounds of uranium of which 2.4 million lbs will be from mining in the first seven years. However, Lotus is on the lookout for near mine expansion opportunities as well as exploring satellite deposits.
The market seems to like the low-risk proposition on offer. Shareholders approved a two-tranche share placement last year totalling A$130m of which A$66.9 has already been completed. Malawi doesn’t have a major mining sector to talk of but Bittar thinks his mine alone can match the $350m in national income that the country’s now-fading tobacco industry generated over the past 10 years.
Lotus is approaching another project, the greenfields Letlhakane prospect in Botswana, with equal enthusiasm. “The time is right now for this,” he says. For now, though, it will be about delivery of Kayelekera and the all-important generation of cash.
LIFE OF GREG
Bittar was hired by Lotus as a consultant but now finds himself in the happy position of being its MD and CEO as part of a general beefing up of management by the company late last year. Trained in economics and law, with degrees in both from the University of Sydney, and a master’s in finance from the London Business School, Bittar previously worked for Morgan Stanley and Brightstar Resources. He is a non-executive director of Horizon Oil.