Berkeley hunts for Salamanca funding

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Uranium hopeful Berkeley Energia has launched discussions with potential financiers and offtake partners for its Salamanca project, in Spain.

With all major approvals now in place, the company said on Thursday that it was hoping to have funding and sales contracts in place before the start of construction in mid-2016.

The Salamanca project was expected to deliver about 4.3-million pounds of uranium oxide a year, over a mine life of 18 years.

Meanwhile, Berkeley has reported a 15% increase in grades at the Retortillo deposit, at Salamanca, following the update of the mineral resource. The overall mineral resource at Salamanca was estimated at 83-million tonnes grading 495 parts per million for 90.5-million pounds of uranium.

The Retortillo deposit is located adjacent to the proposed process plant and along with the Zona 7 deposit would be the first to be mined at Salamanca.

“The positive impact this increase in grade is expected to have on the overall economics emphasises the project’s robustness at current uranium prices,” said MD Paul Atherley.

“The steady-state operating costs of $15.60/lb are already less than half the current uranium price, and with the optimisation studies well under way, this very healthy margin is expected to increase.”

The updated resource estimate is being included in the optimisation studies, which were aimed at making the Salamanca project one of the world’s lowest cost producers.