El Confidential Article Today14 May 2020 10:03
"Berkeley Minera , the company that intends to extract uranium from Retortillo (Salamanca), agrees to immediately invest 87 million euros if it achieves the permits that are still pending . This capital, according to the listed company, is already available in cash, and comes from a capital increase and the purchase of debt convertible into shares of the sovereign fund of Oman , which lends the money at 0% interest.
In order to carry out this investment, the company is only awaiting the construction authorisation from the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) and the urban planning license of the Retortillo City Council to launch its mining project, highlights the company.
The company accelerates its plans in the middle of a stock market 'rally' . Paradoxically, the evolution in the stock market of this company has been inverse to that of the market, which has collapsed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In contrast, Berkeley has gone from being at 0.07 euros on March 16, the all-time low since it hit the market, to reaching 0.2 euros, which is the highest level for almost a year.
After this rebound, the director of Operations of the company, Francisco Bellón , highlights the price of uranium, which has risen more than 30% so far this year, as well as the expectation that he believes there is in the market that they will soon have the placet of the Ministry of Ecological Transition that allows them to advance with the project.
The company highlights that the investment of those 87 million in the 18 months after obtaining administrative permits will create 500 jobs in and around Retortillo, which would be an economic stimulus for a depressed area, especially at the time current crisis to which Spain is heading after the collapse caused by the coronavirus .
In this sense, the Berkeley executive highlights that their plans remain unchanged and that the covid-19 is not an obstacle. Their main challenge has been and continues to be to obtain administrative permits in a context in which environmental pressure groups and some political groups have opposed this mining extraction project from the beginning.
In this regard, the mining firm maintains that "the Retortillo mine already has more than 120 authorisations and favourable reports from local, regional, national and European administrations."
On the economic side, Berkeley points out that "it has already invested more than 86 million euros since the project began in 2012 and plans to allocate a total of almost 400 million euros during the life of the mine if it receives authorisation to start the works. In addition to this amount, it is also important to note that the project is committed to promoting local employment, where it has already become the top employer , and will provide income of 1.5 million euros to the municipalities where it is located and 23 million euros to the Treasury for tax purposes, which may be increased depending on the development of the mine."
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