A very hectic start to September ended with a very hectic end to September. At work, we hosted our inaugural capital markets day in London...

The full event, for anyone dying to see it, can be replayed here: https://profile.lsegissuerservices.com/JSCNationalAtomicCoKazatomprom/fundamentals

After the investor day, we were back to Kazakhstan with investors in tow to spend a few days on a bus, visiting a few uranium mines sites.

And without exception...a ton a great food at every stop!

Final stop on the tour route, which took us to mines between Kyzylorda and Shymkent, was the world heritage site of Turkestan - amazing history with thousands of years of history.

And because there just wasn't enough travel in the third quarter, I arranged a trip to our fuel and metals processing facility - the Ulba Metallurgical Plant - in Ust' Kamenogorsk, in north east Kazakhstan. The facility is massive, celebrating 70 years of history this month.

The nearby museum for the site was pretty amazing - showing a model of the entire site, including the IAEA's warehouse where 90,000 tons of "emergency access" uranium will be stored for countries needing fuel in a pinch (the tiny blue building in the corner of the site).

The site manufactures fuel pellets...and will soon assemble fuel bundles:

And on the beryllium, tantalum and niobium side, various products and alloys are produced. The middle picture shows a super conductor wire - left and middle are typical copper and metal core wire with perhaps 8 - 20 large strands in them. The tiny feathery-looking cut wire on the right is made of tantalum - one small wire (bottom half) cut to expose the over 14,000 strands contained in it! 


In the plant itself, some of the operating equipment is over 100 years old.

A couple of the more interesting facts from the site's history:

1) Ulba built a yacht, currently sitting in a nearby warehouse. It's for sale if anyone has about US$5M to US$10M kicking around - oh, and you'll need a little time to take it home. Ust' Kamenogorsk is on the Irtysh River, which stretches about 4,300 km through China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia - so unless you have a nice place along the River to vacation with it, you'll need to drive it to the Kara Sea and into the Arctic (and while the flat-bottom boar is river and lake worthy...not sure how it'll fare on the open sea!)

2) Kazakhstan's mint is located on the corner of the Ulba site - all of the country's coinage is minted there.

3) On the wall in the museum, a unique piece of history: Stalin's 1945 decree to create the Ulba metallurgical plant!

4) Around the site, they use Russian vehicles like the UAZ-452 minibus and UAZ-469 Jeep. Awesome, extremely basic vehicles - even this one, which was nearly new. I think I'll try to get the kids one for their first vehicle...

Interestingly, the city itself was much more Russian than Kazakh - but it actually felt a lot like Saskatoon, with deciduous trees and a river. 

Where the Irtysh and Ulba rivers come together in the city, it's pretty amazing - the faster flowing Ulba is warmer in the spring, and carrying more sediment, so it's brownish, while the colder Irtysh, flowing from the mountains, is clear and blue!

Like everywhere I go - good food, especially Georgian.

While similar, there were definitely a few elements that were a little "unlike" Saskatoon - like the world's deepest lock (42m, an hour to fill):

And the hotels...a little different!

Next up - a trip to the US west coast in October and finally, a quick trip home to Saskatoon!