Elevate Uranium is entering a pivotal phase in its Namibian operations, with its U-grade™ Pilot Plant—the first facility of its kind ever deployed in the country—now en route from Perth, Australia, to the Erongo Region.
The plant has been designed, built, and tested over the past year, and is scheduled for installation and commissioning in November 2025.
This milestone marks the culmination of more than five years of technical development, as Elevate moves from laboratory trials to real-world testing of its proprietary U-grade™ beneficiation technology.
The company began advancing the process in 2019, drawing on research first conducted at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), before refining it through extensive bench-scale and pilot studies at its metallurgical facilities in Perth.
From Concept to Namibia’s First Advanced Uranium Pilot
Elevate Uranium, formerly known as Marenica Energy, has long held the vision of transforming Namibia’s low-grade calcrete uranium deposits into viable, low-cost resources.
The company’s 2021 rebranding focused on innovation rather than exploration alone, and the U-grade™ technology has become central to that strategy.
In simple terms, U-grade™ is a physical beneficiation process designed to remove gangue minerals, such as quartz and feldspar, which typically make up 80–90 per cent of the ore mass in calcrete deposits.
By separating this waste material before chemical leaching, the process produces a low-mass, high-grade uranium concentrate, dramatically reducing the amount of material that must undergo costly, acid-intensive processing.
How the Plant Works
The U-grade™ Pilot Plant is a modular, continuous-processing system that mimics the operation of a small-scale industrial circuit.
Ore is first crushed and screened to a specific particle size suitable for beneficiation. The material then passes through a sequence of density separation, attrition scrubbing, and classification stages, where differences in particle density and mineral surface properties are used to separate uranium-bearing material from barren gangue.
The process is entirely mechanical and non-chemical, meaning that no acids or reagents are used during beneficiation. Instead, it relies on physical separation techniques to concentrate uranium minerals such as carnotite and tyuyamunite into a smaller volume of feedstock.
This upgraded concentrate can then be fed directly into a downstream leach circuit, where uranium extraction efficiency is much higher due to the reduced gangue content. Because the plant removes up to 90 per cent of the inert material before leaching, it significantly lowers acid consumption (by as much as 75 per cent), reduces energy input, and cuts water use — crucial gains in Namibia’s arid mining environment.
The pilot plant is designed to operate continuously for long durations, not in batch mode, allowing Elevate to simulate real operational conditions. Data will be collected on throughput, recovery rates, particle-size optimisation, and overall system stability. Once operational, the facility will process a minimum of 60 tonnes of uranium-bearing material, generating a detailed performance dataset to support commercial-scale design.
In effect, the plant acts as both a proof-of-concept and a prototype, validating whether the U-grade™ process can be scaled up to handle the thousands of tonnes required for full mine operations.
Strategic Purpose
The pilot plant is not a production facility but a proof-of-concept platform designed to validate the U-grade™ process under Namibian conditions.
Successful results could pave the way for commercial roll-out across multiple projects, unlocking value from deposits that were previously uneconomic to develop.
Chief Executive Officer Murray Hill has described the technology as “a step-change innovation that could redefine uranium beneficiation economics by lowering acid consumption and improving efficiency.”
By proving that Namibian ore can be upgraded before leaching, Elevate aims to position itself—and the country—as a leader in advanced uranium processing. The company believes that U-grade™ could give Namibia a unique advantage at a time when global nuclear demand is surging and Western utilities are seeking diversified, low-carbon supply chains.
Why It Matters
If the pilot performs as expected, it will strengthen the economic case for Elevate’s development pipeline and signal that Namibia can move beyond extraction into technological innovation. The U-grade™ process addresses two of the industry’s biggest challenges—high reagent costs and environmental footprint—while supporting the national goal of building a cleaner, more efficient mining sector.
The plant’s deployment also highlights the growing technical sophistication of Namibia’s uranium industry, which already hosts world-class operations at Rössing, Husab, and Langer Heinrich. Elevate’s move adds a new dimension: innovation and value addition through beneficiation.
By the end of 2025, as the U-grade™ Pilot Plant begins its first continuous runs in Erongo, the company hopes to confirm what years of testing in Australia have suggested—that Namibia’s next uranium advantage might not lie just in geology, but also in technology.
