ASX-listed Lotus Resources has announced a restructured board and senior management team to accelerate the development of its Kayelekera uranium mine, in Malawi, and to advance its Letlhakane project, in Botswana.

Grant Davey has been appointed executive director, Greg Bittar CEO and Warren King Kayelekera project director for execution.

Davey founded Lotus through the acquisition of Kayelekera and has more than 30 years of management, project development and operational experience. Bittar has been with Lotus since earlier this year focussing on corporate development, principally offtake and financing discussions and investor relations and King is an engineer with 25 years’ experience specialising in project execution, plant refurbishment and construction startup, commissioning and optimisation.

Keith Bowes, formerly MD, will assume the role of technical director.

Lotus COO Mike da Costa will continue to focus on operational readiness, contract mining preparation and mining startup for Kayelekera along with government relations, occupational health and safety, environmental, social and governance matters and the development work at Letlhakane.

With the focus for Kayelekera being on financing, procurement, execution, and project delivery, the board decided it was the right time to realign and build up the senior management team to focus on commercial and project execution, said Davey.

“The team’s vision is to be the quickest and cheapest restart of a uranium mine which is possible as we have an existing processing plant and openpit which are in exceptionally good condition,” he reported.

Davey said the board believed the team had the skills and expertise required to drive Kayelekera to become the next meaningful global uranium producer.

The Kayelekera project hosts a current resource of 51.1-million pounds of uranium oxide, and historically produced about 11-million pounds of uranium between 2009 and 2014. The company completed a positive restart study, which has determined an ore reserve of 23-million pounds and demonstrated that Kayelekera can support a viable operation.

Last month, Lotus and the Malawi government signed a mine development agreement that guarantees a stability period of ten years during which the project will not be subject to any detrimental changes to the fiscal regime.

The Letlhakane project hosts a current resource of 118.2-million pounds of uranium oxide.