Impact: Positive
Lotus Resources provided a Definitive Feasibility Study (restart DFS) for its 85%-owned Kayelekera uranium project in Malawi. It announced 15.9Mt at 660 ppm U3O8 for 23M lb U3O8 in reserves, with average production of 2.4M lb U3O8 per annum over a 10-year life-of-mine. We note that the low initial capital cost of US$88M, with an initial capital intensity of US$37/lb, ranks the project as one of the lowest capital costs globally. Overall, we view this update positively, especially from an impressive cost control POV given the current inflationary environment. Furthermore, we believe Lotus has one of the larger, near-term uranium projects with relatively low risk given that its flowsheet is already well understood due to past production. Several processing and mining plans issues have been addressed.
