Deep Yellow keeps Tumas uranium project shovel-ready as it waits on price

Deep Yellow invested A$61.4m ($40m) in its Tumas uranium project in Namibia during the year to 30 June 2026, split between A$48.2m on project development and A$13.2m on drilling and resource evaluation, as the company kept the project construction-ready without committing to build.

A deliberately patient strategy

The Australian-listed developer deferred a final investment decision on Tumas in April 2025, judging that uranium prices at the time did not justify committing capital to a greenfield mine. Rather than shelve the project, Deep Yellow has continued funding engineering, early infrastructure and resource work so that construction can start quickly once prices clear its internal threshold, reported to be around $82.50 a pound.

A resource built for the long term

Tumas hosts ore reserves of 79.5-million pounds of U3O8 at a grade of 298 parts per million, underpinning a projected 30-year mine life at a nameplate output of 3.6-million pounds a year in its initial phase. If built, it would become Namibia's fourth uranium mine, joining Rössing, Husab and the restarted Langer Heinrich.

Racing rivals to construction

Deep Yellow's strategy is a bet that patience will pay off: by keeping Tumas fully de-risked, the company argues it can reach construction faster than rival projects once the uranium term price moves decisively higher. That puts it in direct competition with Bannerman Energy's nearby Etango project, which has already lined up Chinese financing and is targeting a fourth-quarter 2026 investment decision regardless of where spot prices sit.

What it means for Namibia's uranium pipeline

With spot uranium prices hovering in the high $80s to low $90s a pound through much of 2026 — well up from the depressed levels of the previous decade but below the $101 peak reached in January — Namibia's queue of undeveloped uranium projects illustrates how differently companies are reading the same market. Deep Yellow's caution contrasts with Bannerman's push to build regardless, a divergence that will be tested as both projects compete for contracts with the same pool of global utilities.

Sources

• Rio Times Online: Deep Yellow Tumas Uranium: US$40M Into Namibia Mine, 06 Aug 2026

Photo: Dunes in the Namib Desert near Namibia's uranium mining region, where Deep Yellow's Tumas project is located. Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.