JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – JSE-listed construction company Basil Read has been awarded a contract to build a 22 km road to Swakop Uranium’s new R12-billion Husab mine project in Namibia.

The construction of the R193-million road is expected to be completed in February 2014.

Eleven metres wide, the road will have one 3.5 m lane in either direction, a 0.3m surfaced shoulder and a 1.7m unsurfaced shoulder.

An estimated 2 200 t of cement and 190 000 m of seal will be used to construct the road from outside Swakopmund to the proposed mine.

Basil Read CEO Marius Heyns says the road, which will require low maintenance, is especially economical to construct in rural environments when compared with the alternative of hot mix asphalt.

Owing to heavy anticipated traffic volumes, Cape seal was determined to be the best surfacing.

Included is a 2 000 m concrete bridge with 8 spans of 20 m each.

The 160-metre-long structure will be erected over the Khan River, 14 km from the mine project.

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 the Husab project by the end of 2015.

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

China Guangdong Nuclear Power subsidiary Taurus Minerals owns 90% of Swakop Uranium and Namibia’s 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 mine project will create more than 4 000 temporary jobs during construction and about 2 000 permanent operational jobs, including contractor jobs.
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.