Moving forward, the mine's expansion programme requires significant financial investments in its future. These would involve costly waste rock stripping to expose the uranium bearing ore and to acquire new heavy mining equipment for the open pit. Another ongoing expansion activity is the mine's heap leaching pilot plant.
During the year under review the volatility of the uranium price continued, cycling between a high of US$53 per pound in January and a low of US$42 per pound of uranium oxide in September, as the effects of the world financial crisis continued.
"However, the long-term outlook for the mine remains bright."
"Our expansion investment requires an increase in manpower, but skills shortage continued to be one of the main challenges faced by the mining industry in Namibia, especially in light of increased competition from other uranium operations in the Erongo Region," quoted Mutumba from the report.
We continue to focus sharply on equipping our existing staff with various skills and offering them leadership training. We have also invested extensively in our potential future workforce, supporting 130 bursary apprentices and 60 university students in 2009.
END QUOTE
....making the case for sharing of resources. ;0)
From p3 of the report:
QUOTE
2010 Rossing Uranium's strategic objectives
Expanded key drivers:
Growth and innovation:
- Improvement projects - R�ssing South
END QUOTE
I also note from Mike Leech's introduction (Rossing Uranium MD):
QUOTE
As always, but particularly now, volume and cost efficiency are the main levers we use to maintain our profitability. For this reason we have initiated a significant improvement programme that seeks to lift volumes and save costs wherever practical.
We have also reduced capital spend to the essential health, safety and environment projects and those with high returns, and we are focusing on completing projects a bit more slowly but primarily with our own resources.
END QUOTE
Not a lot of point spending a lot of CAPEX on the old Rossing mine, if they might be about to gain access to some substantial higher grade and cheaper to extract & process resources?
Methinks Rossing Uranium are itching to get their hands on Rossing South ore, if they can.
Cheers,
Mark
EXT Price at posting:
$7.80 Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
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