Relevant excerpts from the latest conference call transcript:
- Kayelekera could have between 2 or 3 million pounds of capacity once it is restarted. So Paladin in a normalized uranium price environment has the ability to double its existing production through capacity that is already built.
- The Company has done a lot of work drafting a feasibility study for the restart of Kayelekera and I believe we've done a lot of work to reduce the cost of that operation in a restart scenario.
It's very low capital, so the kind of numbers that we've talked about historically about two years ago Paladin was saying we $70 for the restart of Kayelekera. Those kind of numbers aren't required anymore.
Kayelekera, we have a draft study that shows a 30% IRR of $55 uranium price. So we're going to work on really getting that up to a definitive feasibility study level. We probably actually will be able to release that information publicly through the course of the year.
- So firstly the cash costs are Kayelekera were previously around -- the C1 cash costs was previously around -- sorry, the cash costs were around $34 a pound. So we're working on substantially reducing those costs in a restart. That restart will probably require a little bit of new capital in order to achieve that changed cost profile but we -- so I can't say yet -- we haven't publicly revealed what a revised cost structure of Kayelekera would be but we have an internally advanced study that's quite detailed and now we will spend some time getting some third party input to that study and we'll probably be able to publish a restart feasibility study some time during 2017, which I think will be quite well received by the market in showing how the operating metrics of that mine can be improved.
So I can't give you the new costs yet but we will at some point come out with a study.
PDN Price at posting:
10.5¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)