The Australian uranium development company, Bannerman Energy, has raised N$1 billion for construction of its Etango flagship project in Namibia.
The funds raised in July will cover design, construction power, earthworks and selected long-lead items.
According to the latest issue of the Namibia Chamber of Mines’ e-newsletter, the first stage of early construction works has been completed and focus has now shifted to finalising further works.
The first stage of the access road to the mine entrance was completed in June, with a few items on the project list, including landscape rehabilitation, the installation of traffic signs and the repositioning of fibre-optic cables and outstanding power lines.
The newsletter noted that the temporary water pipeline was also completed and successfully pressure tested.
In July, the team completed the construction of the seven-metre high water storage tank, with a diameter of 11,7 metres and a capacity of 700 000 litres.
The pipeline has been commissioned from the Namibia Water Corporation (NamWater) pipeline near the Rössing Mountain, to the terminal water storage tank. Rehabilitation work and final route markings are now being completed.
Bannerman Mining Resources Namibia managing director Werner Ewald expressed delight with the progress made.
“When any safety or environmental concerns were highlighted, the contractor and the Bannerman team worked well together to address these issues.
“Regular updates have ensured that items that could have delayed the works were taken care of and thus the works are very close to achieving their targeted completion dates,” he said.
Bannerman awarded two contracts to the local Namibian contractor, Namibbeton, in January, for the construction of the temporary water pipeline and access road.
Ewald said an external environmental inspection was conducted early in July and confirmed good compliance to all environmental standards.
Construction is not the only thing that has advanced at Bannerman in the last three months; the front-end engineering and design (Feed) and control budget estimate (CBE) processes were completed, providing significant further de-risking of the base-case definitive feasibility study (DFS) for the eight million metric tonnes per year Etango uranium development.
“The Feed process is highly valuable as we move towards construction,” said Bannerman Energy chief executive Gavin Chamberlain.
“Improved certainty of design related to the inter-relationship between selected mechanical equipment has improved technical certainty. We now have a more detailed construction schedule, which supports a shorter timeline between the final investment decision (FID) and the start of construction.”
Commenting on the CBE processes, Gavin said: “The total pre-production capital estimate has increased by 11,3%, which included incremental scope changes that have further de-risked the project. Even more noteworthy, there was just a 2,6% increase in forecast operating costs,” he said.
– email: matthew@namibian.com.na
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