Bannerman Takes Final Investment Decision on Namibia’s Etango Uranium Mine

Bannerman Energy and its Chinese partner, CNNC Overseas Limited (CNOL), took a positive final investment decision on October 23 to move the Etango uranium project in Namibia into full-scale construction, the companies said. The decision clears the way for a mine that is expected to produce about 3.5 million pounds of uranium oxide (U3O8) a year once it reaches commissioning, targeted for 2028, with China’s state nuclear group securing a direct stake in one of the world’s largest known undeveloped uranium deposits.

A joint venture years in the making

Etango sits in Namibia’s Erongo region, about 30 km southeast of the coastal town of Swakopmund, and holds an estimated resource of 207 million pounds of U3O8. The project is held through the Etango Joint Venture, in which Bannerman holds 55% and CNOL — a subsidiary of China National Uranium Corporation, itself part of China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) — holds 45%. The JV in turn owns a 95% interest in the project; the remaining 5% is a loan-carried stake Bannerman granted to Namibia’s One Economy Foundation, a local social welfare organization, back in 2017. CNOL’s entry followed more than a year of on-and-off negotiations and a series of delayed FID targets dating back to 2024, according to Bannerman’s own quarterly disclosures.

Funding already largely in place

Pre-production capital spending is estimated at roughly $353 million. Around $64 million of that has already gone into early works that began in January 2024, with the balance to be funded from cash already sitting in the joint venture. As of the end of September, bulk earthworks were 99% complete, concrete work was under way on the primary crusher and dry-plant infrastructure, and the first phase of a permanent water pipeline was about 90% finished. Namibia’s state utility, NamWater, signed off on a permanent water-supply agreement with Bannerman in June. The mine will use open-pit mining feeding a heap-leach processing circuit, a design confirmed in a definitive feasibility study completed in December 2022.

Room to grow beyond the base case

The FID covers the “Etango-8” design built around 3.5 million lb U3O8 a year, but a 2024 scoping study found the operation could be expanded to roughly 6.7 million lb a year if market conditions support it — effectively giving Bannerman and CNOL an option on nearly doubling output without a second permitting process from scratch. Bannerman also used the announcement to confirm a management change, naming Danie van Aswegen, previously the company’s Namibia chief operating officer, as chief executive of Bannerman Mining Resources Namibia.

Why a Chinese utility wanted in

CNNC is both the operator of China’s existing nuclear fleet and a central buyer in the global uranium market as Beijing keeps adding reactors faster than any other country. Namibia already hosts two of the uranium industry’s largest mines — Rössing and the CNNC-backed Husab mine — making it one of only a handful of countries, alongside Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia, that can supply uranium at meaningful scale to utilities looking to lock in long-term, non-Russian supply. A direct equity stake in a third major Namibian deposit gives CNNC additional control over a part of its fuel supply chain rather than relying solely on spot or term purchases from producers such as Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom or Canada’s Cameco. The deal also sits inside a pattern of Chinese state companies building direct positions in the minerals that feed the global energy transition, from lithium and rare earths to, now, uranium.

Part of a broader scramble for uranium supply

Etango’s FID lands amid a wider push by both producers and reactor-fuel buyers to lock down uranium supply chains. In the US, Westinghouse said this month it would invest $1 billion in a new enriched-uranium fuel plant, and General Matter has filed the country’s first new NRC license application for a uranium enrichment facility in decades — both signs that Western utilities and suppliers are trying to reduce dependence on Russian-linked enrichment capacity even as China secures its own mined-uranium feedstock through deals like the one in Namibia.

Sources

• World Nuclear News, “FID sees Etango enter full-scale construction,” October 23, 2026 — for project design, resource figures, capex, construction progress and CEO quote.
• Bannerman Energy Investor Centre, “Positive Final Investment Decision for Etango Mine,” ASX announcement, October 23, 2026, 9:04 AM — company disclosure confirming the FID date and decision.

Illustrative image. Photo: Nuclear Regulatory Commission from US, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — source