Uranium One Inc SXRZF

First Uranium is looking for growth in North Ameri

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n an interview on ClassicFM @ 18:25 on 19 August 2008

[miningmx.com]-- SIMMER & Jack subsidiary First Uranium is looking foropportunities to diversify its geographical spread to dilute risk, CEOGordon Miller said.

Miller is now living in Canada but the two companies he heads are operating in South Africa in the gold and uranium sectors."To be a price maker in the uranium market you’re effectively sellingto very large utilities and the quality of your product as also thesource of where your product comes from are important considerationsfor utilities when they buy uranium," Miller said on Classic Business,a week-nightly radio broadcast."So we have a diversification strategy where we’re going to diversifyour geopolitical risk as far as uranium production is concerned, and todo that we’re focused in North America, so a large part of my portfoliois looking for growth opportunities in Canada and the US," he said.The Simmers' mines and its 63% held First Uranium operations have bothbeen affected by the power shortage in South Africa, which shut downmines for a week in January this year."Obviously the Eskom situation has had an impact on our cost structureso we’ve seen quite significant increases in unit costs," Miller said."We took a number of months to study the Eskom situation and came tothe conclusion that there will be situations where we may be requiredto generate additional power and for that reason we bought dieselgenerators. We now have significant amounts of diesel-generatingcapacity, some of it connected in already in the event that we need toload shed."Simmers is doubling the capacity at tailings treatment operation MineWaste Solutions and that should be commissioned early in 2009."We’ll hopefully commission that early next year which will increaseour gold output significantly and reduce unit costs, and at the sametime we’ll be commissioning a uranium plant at the Mine Waste Solutionsfacility which is also under construction presently," Miller said."At the Ezulwini mine we commenced production in July - we’vecommissioned our new gold plant - and we’ll be commencing uraniumproduction in October of this year. So we expect a significant ramp upof revenues from the Ezulwini project," he said."If you look at Simmers wholly owned subsidiaries - we’ve got theBuffelsfontein gold mine. The key focus there is the No 5 Shaft whichisn’t producing very much at this point in time but we’re looking toramp up production from No 5 Shaft significantly into the future," hesaid."And at TGME we have a number of surface tailings and oxide ore heapleach projects that are in construction or being developed at thispoint in time and we are looking to get gold production from those inthe not-too-distant future as well. So we have a significant growthprofile at all of our operations."