Deep Yellow To Follow Same Strategy Despite Change In Leadership

Published on Friday January 21 2011

The recent appointment of a new managing director will have no impact on the development of Deep Yellow Limited’s Omahola project, the company’s chairperson, Mervyn Greene said this week.

“As far as we and Reptile Uranium are concerned, there is no change to our strategy in terms of the development of the Omahola project. Greg Cochran, as the new Group MD, will be working closely with Dr Leon Pretorius, MD of Reptile, to ensure that Deep Yellow supports our business in Namibia to make swift progress as we have stated in our recent stock exchange releases. I believe that the appointment of the new MD will add momentum to the development of our flagship Omahola project, as well as our other prospects in Namibia,” he told the Economist.

Greene added that there is a general consensus amongst analysts that there will be a shortfall between supply and demand for uranium over the next few years, therefore new mines must be developed to fill this gap.

“Deep Yellow has consistently focused on finding higher grade deposits, generally 400ppm for primary deposits in hard rock or at least 200ppm for secondary deposits in calcrete. We did this because we believed that the capital and operating costs at lower grades would be too high and risky to make deposits commercially viable. 

We believe that this strategy has been the right one and in addition we feel that Namibia is an exceptionally good location for us to develop new uranium deposits and commend the government and the Ministry of Mines and Energy for their support of the uranium industry,” Greene said.

According to Greene, his company is looking forward to the further development of Omahola as well as ensuring that it continues to explore its EPLs in the country with the objective of generating positive results.

Greene refused to shed more light on the resignation of Patrick Mutz as MD of Deep Yellow as “the reasons are private to Mr Mutz”.

Mutz resigned from his position at the uranium company as of 12 January this year, citing “personal and family reasons”.

Cochran, the current CEO of Terramin Australia Limited, will take this position over as from 24 January.

“I am honoured and excited to have been given the opportunity to be Deep Yellow’s managing director. The company is highly regarded in the industry due to the quality of its assets, the professionalism of its team and the strength and credentials of its board. I am looking forward to joining them at this critical phase in the company’s history as it makes the transition from explorer to developer and producer,” said Cochran.

He is a registered professional mining engineer with 25 years’ experience in the international mining industry. Prior to his position at Terramin, Cochran held the position of executive vice president at Uranium One Inc., one of the world’s leading uranium companies, where he led the technical team in Uranium One’s C$3.8 billion acquisition of UrAsia Energy Ltd.

He managed the integration of UrAsia’s Kazakhstan operations into Uranium One’s business and represented the company’s interests on the Betpak Dala and Kyzlkum Joint Venture Boards.

Cochran was also responsible for Uranium One’s Australian business. During his tenure,

regulatory approval was obtained for the Honeymoon uranium project located in South Australia and he was instrumental in the establishment of the Mitsui Uranium One Australia Joint Venture.

Cochran also worked for Mitsubishi Development (Pty) Ltd, but built his15 years mining career at BHP Billiton, before he was appointed as the company’s vice president of business development for diamonds and speciality products after gaining experience in gold and coal operations, base metals projects and corporate finance.

DYL is an Australian-based pure uranium company with principal exploration and development activity in the country through its 100% owned subsidiary, Reptile Uranium Namibia (Pty) Limited.