The contract has been awarded for a new access road to Swakop Uranium’s new R12-billion Husab uranium mine project 50 km east of Swakopmund, in Namibia.

JSE-listed construction company Basil Read has won the R193-million contract to build the 22 km road in 15 months, CEO Marius Heyns reports.

China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp is developing Husab, which is said to host Namibia’s largest granite-hosted uranium deposit.

Engineering and project management companies Amec and Tenova Bateman Sub-Saharan Africa form the Husab project joint venture consortium, which is expected to oversee the construction of the Husab project by the end of 2015.

The mine is designed to produce at a rate of 15-million pounds of uranium oxide a year.

The 11-m-wide road to the 20-year-plus mine will comprise one 3.5 m lane in either direction.

China Guangdong Nuclear Power subsidiary Taurus Minerals owns 90% of Swakop Uranium and Namibian State-owned Epangelo Mining the remaining 10%.

With 280-million tons of uranium reserves, Husab’s two separate openpits that will feed a single process plant are expected to ramp up to full production by 2017.

A $130-million contract to supply three Caterpillar hydraulic face shovels, three electric rope shovels, six rotary blasthole drill rigs, two rotary blasthole drills and two diesel engine motivators has been awarded to Barloworld Equipment’s Extended Mining Product Range business, which is engaged in the supply of Caterpillar-rebranded Bucyrus products.

The project will create more than 4 000 temporary jobs during construction and about 2 000 permanent operational jobs, including contractor jobs.

In anticipation of heavy traffic volumes, Basil Read will use an estimated 2 200 t of cement and 190 000 m of seal – an asphalt alternative – in the construction of the road, which will include a 160-m-long concrete bridge over the Khan river, some 14 km from the project.

In the Erongo region of central-west Namibia, grading at 518 parts per million for 320- million pounds of contained uranium oxide is 50% higher than that of the Rössing mine, which is currently one of the largest openpit mines in the world.

Additional exploration and resource definition drilling are expected to continue to increase the already large resource inventory and enable significant future extensions to the mine life.