Kazatomprom shareholders approve China uranium sale, Uranium One proposal fails
Absentee ballots closed Oct. 6; the Oct. 7 results showed shareholders approved the SNURDC transaction but did not approve the Uranium One proposal.
Ines Halvorsen
On Oct. 7, 88.63 per cent of votes at National Atomic Company “Kazatomprom” JSC LONKAP backed a spot-term uranium concentrate sale to China's State Nuclear Uranium Resource Development Company Limited, the producer reported on Oct. 8. A separate supply proposal with Uranium One Group JSC failed after 88.34 per cent of voting shares were withheld, leaving that buyer without the approval sought at the meeting. The approved Chinese counterparty, known as SNURDC, has no disclosed contract price, volume, duration or first delivery date in Kazatomprom's notices.
Kazatomprom's voting table shows that the Uranium One proposal drew 5.39 per cent in favour and 6.27 per cent against. Withheld votes accounted for the remaining 88.34 per cent of voting shares. The company said a simple majority was needed for approval, so the result should not be read as an outright vote against the Russian buyer.
The China resolution, by contrast, drew 201,531,278 votes in favour and 14,757,296 against, with 11,088,543 withheld. Shareholders representing 99.21 per cent of eligible voting shares participated in the absentee vote. For holders, the result removes the shareholder approval hurdle for the SNURDC transaction but does not show how much revenue the proposed sale would earn or when the uranium would ship.
The Aug. 21 meeting notice said both prospective buyers had accepted Kazatomprom's commercial offers and that the parties had agreed draft contracts. The Oct. 8 result reports approval of one transaction and failure of the other; it does not report the signing of a final SNURDC contract.
"A simple majority of votes was required for the adoption of the resolution on this matter," Kazatomprom said in its Oct. 8 voting statement.
Delivery Points Were Named, Volumes Were Withheld
Under the Chinese draft, Kazatomprom expected to deliver uranium oxide concentrate to the Alashankou railway station in China, according to the Aug. 21 meeting notice. The Uranium One draft named the Siberian Chemical Plant in Russia as its physical delivery point. Both locations were proposed delivery points, and the notice gave no shipment date for either route.
Kazatomprom described SNURDC as a subsidiary of State Power Investment Corporation, with responsibility for supplying uranium and fuel assemblies to its parent. It called the proposed agreement a spot-term sale, but said the pricing, volumes and delivery schedule could not be disclosed under confidentiality terms. The company made the same disclosure about the Uranium One draft, so the public documents do not show whether the two proposed sales were comparable in scale.
Kazatomprom said in its Oct. 8 voting statement that its attributable output represented about 20 per cent of global primary uranium production in 2025. It operates 27 deposits grouped into 14 mining assets in Kazakhstan. The confidential sale quantity prevents a calculation of how much production would be committed to SNURDC.
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Kazatomprom's Oct. 8 statement gives no date for signing the SNURDC contract or making the first uranium delivery.
