Kazakhstan, Astana, June 6 / Trend D. Mukhtarov /
An expanded meeting of the coordinating council on the regulation of the production and supply of sulfuric acid for the needs of the company was held in Kazakh national atomic company Kazatomprom, the company said on Wednesday.
According to the report, Kazakh Deputy Minister of Industry and New Technologies Albert Rau, other representatives of the Ministry, Kazatomprom representatives and its uranium mining companies, as well as Kazakh producers and suppliers of sulfuric acid attended the meeting.
The improvement of logistics system, pricing policy and volume of sulfuric acid production given the commissioning of new production capacities in the Kazakh Republic were discussed at the meeting.
Rau added that the excess of sulfuric acid production is expected to be observed in Kazakhstan soon.
Deputy Chairman of Kazatomprom national company Nurlan Ryspanov said that sulfuric acid is one of the strategic reagents for in-situ leaching of uranium. The Kazakh uranium enterprises' needs for sulfuric acid in 2013 will amount to about two million tons.
At present, Kazatomprom uses local sulfuric acid. It is planned to continue working only with domestic producers to increase the local content in uranium production.
The price on sulfuric acid is an important issue. Despite the increasing production volumes, it is still quite high and hits around 22,000 tenge per ton.
The representatives of Kazakh sulfuric acid suppliers said that this price is stipulated by increasing transportation costs and maintenance of storage capacity.
In previous years, there was a significant shortage of sulfuric acid, which was covered by foreign suppliers. Commissioning own sulfuric acid capacities in Kazakhstan fully met the needs in the reagent.
Kazatomprom is confident that the dependence on foreign suppliers may contain significant technological risks associated with the late delivery of reagent due to the difficulties in logistics.
The Kazakh Ministry of Industry and New Technologies specially controls the issue of supporting for Kazakh producers.
The official exchange rate is 151.34 Tenge/1$ on June 6.