Nasdaq-listed advanced materials company ASP Isotopes (ASPI) expects to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on August 27. In a pre-listing statement on August 8, the company said it was pursuing a share-for-share deal with JSE- and ASX-listed Renergen, South Africa’s only onshore helium and LNG producer.

ASPI has also reached an agreement with the state-owned Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (NECSA) to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium at the Pelindaba nuclear research facility outside Tshwane metropolitan municipality, which includes Pretoria and surrounding areas. The agreement covers collaboration in research, development, and eventual commercial production of advanced nuclear fuels.

According to ASPI’s statement, Renergen’s board has accepted ASPI’s offer to buy all Renergen shares through a scheme of arrangement under the South African Companies Act. If approved and implemented, Renergen shareholders will receive 0.09196 ASPI shares for each Renergen share held, with no cash except for fractional amounts. ASPI will then own Renergen entirely, Renergen will be delisted from the JSE, A2X, and ASX, and its shareholders will become ASPI shareholders. ASPI stated the market value of its common stock as $831mn (about ZAR15bn).

In May, ASPI secured a loan of up to $22mn from US-based nuclear innovation company TerraPower to help fund a proposed uranium enrichment plant at Pelindaba through QLE TP Funding, a special purpose entity (SPE) set up as a subsidiary of TerraPower.

“We are currently pursuing an initiative to apply our enrichment technologies to the enrichment of uranium-235 (U-235) in South Africa,” ASPI said in the statement. “We believe the U-235 we may produce using QE (quantum enrichment) technology may be commercialised as a nuclear fuel component for use in the new generation of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)-fuelled small modular reactors that are currently under development for commercial and government uses.”

ASPI said the Pelindaba facility could produce commercial quantities of HALEU once permitted. The plant’s initial supply is intended for TerraPower’s Natrium project in Wyoming in 2027-2028, under an agreement worth up to $375mn over 18 months. A planned 10-year deal from 2028 to 2037 could be worth up to $3.75bn.

ASPI develops technologies and processes to enrich natural isotopes into higher concentration products for use in various industries. Its proprietary Aerodynamic Separation Process (ASP) and Quantum Enrichment (QE) technologies enable the production of isotopes such as carbon-14, molybdenum-100 and silicon-28.

The company has completed commissioning and begun commercial production at its C-14 and Si-28 ASP facilities in Pretoria, and has started producing commercial samples of highly enriched ytterbium-176 (Yb-176) at its Pretoria QE facility.

“We expect our first three enrichment facilities to generate commercial products during 2025. In addition, we have started planning additional isotope enrichment plants both in South Africa and in other jurisdictions, including Iceland and the US,” ASPI said.