How Rössing Uranium ’ s vertical integration with China National Nuclear Corporation ( CNNC ) is set to transform the Namibian mining giant

U ranium was first discovered in the Namib Desert in 1928 , but it was only following intensive exploration in the late 1950s that the mining industry ’ s interest was piqued . Rio Tinto originally secured the rights to the low-grade Rössing deposit in 1966 . A decade later in 1976 , Rössing Uranium , Namibia ’ s first commercial uranium mine , started production . Today , Namibia has two significant uranium mines ( Rössing Uranium and Swakop Uranium ) which together provide 11 % of the world ’ s uranium oxide output in 2019 ; in 2019 Rössing Uranium produced 3.9 % of that total . The mine has a capacity of 4,500 tonnes of uranium oxide per year and , by the end of 2019 , had supplied a total of 137,537 tonnes of uranium oxide to the world .