Photo by: Bloomberg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Uranium miner Paladin Energy on Monday reported a 79% quarter-on-quarter increase in sales revenue for the three months ended December.
Total sales for the December quarter reached 1.91-million pounds uranium oxide (U3O8), with an average selling price of $36.58/lb, generating revenue of $69.9-million. Paladin noted that the sales revenue was within the company’s expectations.
The miner told shareholders that its Langer Heinrich mine, in Namibia, had reported a 27% increase in production during the quarter under review, to deliver some 1.3-million pounds of U3O8.
This was compared to the just over one-million pounds of U3O8 delivered in the three months to September. The previous quarter’s production was affected by unforeseen issues with process circuit scaling, which exacerbated production losses from planned maintenance.
As a result of the reduced production during the September quarter, and the current tightening of the world uranium market, Paladin said that it would not make up all of the lost production from the early part of the year, during the remainder of the 2015 financial year.
The company was targeting production at budget rates for the remainder of the year, instead focusing on reducing operating costs and improving process efficiencies.
As a result, full year yearly production had been downwardly revised by nearly 5%, to between 5.2-million pounds and 5.5-million pounds.
Meanwhile, Paladin said it was readying to conduct a detailed feasibility to restart production at the Kayelekera mine, in Malawi. Production would only restart when market conditions proved more favourable.
The Kayelekera mine officially ceased production in May last year, and was placed on care and maintenance.
Paladin said that the feasibility study would include technical and economic assembly of the existing knowledge base for the project, as well as cost optimising factors such as commercial power, manpower rationalisation and other related improvements.