Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.22
By Nigar Guliyeva – Trend:
Kazatomprom, Kazakhstan's national atomic company controlling all uranium exploration and mining as well as other nuclear-related activities, including imports and exports of nuclear materials, intends to expand the geography of its product sales, Company's CEO Galymzhan Pirmatov told a briefing on Dec.21.
"Kazatomprom is actively working to strengthen its marketing function so that to maximize the marginality of sales and expand the sales geography," said Pirmatov.
He noted that Kazakatom AG Trading Company was established for this end in Switzerland in June 2017.
"The company is actively developing the cooperation with its partners. Jointly with China's CGNPC it is constructing a plant for production of fuel assemblies at the premises of the Ulba Metallurgical Plant (200 tons of fuel assemblies p.a.), and with Canada's Cameco Corporation it signed an agreement to increase Kazatomprom's share in Inkai JV from 40 to 60 percent," Pirmatov added.
Pirmatov further noted that in 2018, Kazakhstan plans to extract 23,000 tons of uranium.
"All our companies have contracts for subsoil use, on the basis of which they conduct activities for the extraction of uranium. These contracts specify annual production volumes, they may differ from year to year. The following year, if all companies in Kazakhstan operate in accordance with contractual obligations, they would have extracted more than 27,000 tons. We plan to produce about 23,000 tons in 2018, " he said.
This year, according to him, the volume of production is also expected at 23,000 tons.
Earlier it was reported that Kazatomprom intends to reduce the volume of uranium mining by 20%.
In 2016, uranium mining in Kazakhstan amounted to about 24,000 tons, which is 1.7 percent higher than in 2015.