KALGOORLIE (miningweekly.com) – Uranium developer Boss Energy is poised to announce its first offtake deal before the start of production at its Honeymoon project, in South Australia, before the end of the year.
Speaking at the Diggers & Dealers conference, Boss MD and CEO Duncan Craib said the company had been fielding significant interest from fuel buyers over the last six to 12 months.
“We have been resisting the temptation to do so in the lead-up to this point because we had the strong belief that uranium prices would rise and they have and luckily, we held out.
“Our strategy is to enter into market-related contracts with varying tenures to keep growing with the market and layering into that rising price,” Craib said.
Craib told journalists on the sidelines of the conference that the buyer for Honeymoon’s first uranium would likely come out of the US or Europe.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted Western utilities to wean themselves off Russian uranium supply, Craib noted. This, coupled with the dwindling inventories at utilities in Europe and the US, as well as the longer project lives of the nuclear power plants, means that uranium demand has surged in recent months.
The restart of the Honeymoon project will cost A$113-million, and the project will ramp up to steady-state production of 2.45-million pounds of uranium oxide a year over a mine life of 11 years.
Craib on Monday said that the restart project was tracking on time and within budget, with 80% of restart capital already spent on the project. Boss was fully funded to bring the project to production, with the company carrying zero debt.