Namibia Uranium Mine May Ship $700 Million a Year, Extract Resources Says
Extract Resources Ltd.’s Namibian unit, Swakop Uranium, said its Husab mine in the nation may export as much as 5 billion Namibian dollars ($700 million) of uranium a year once it starts operating in early 2014.
The mine will be one of the world’s six largest once production starts, Swakop’s Chief Executive Officer Norman Green said in an e-mailed statement today. Output could then rise to as much as 15 million pounds (6.8 million kilograms) of uranium oxide a year, making it the world’s second-largest, it said.
Studies by the company have indicated that Husab could hold as much as 108 million pounds of uranium oxide, the company said. The mine is located in Namibia’s Erongo region, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) northeast of the port of Walvis Bay.
Namibian uranium production may quadruple by 2015 as new mines are opened, more than doubling the metal’s contribution to the economy, Investment House Namibia, a Windhoek-based brokerage, said on May 18. The industry accounted for 5.6 percent of Namibia’s gross domestic product last year.
Namibia is Africa’s second-largest producer of the nuclear fuel, after Niger.
To contact the reporter on this story: Chamwe Kaira in Windhoek via Johannesburg at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net
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