Gold production jumps by 52 pct
By Nigar Orujova
The leading company extracting precious metals in Azerbaijan, Anglo Asian Mining plc, increased gold production by over 50 percent in the first quarter of 2015.
Gold production rose to 17,193 ounces with 11,222 ounces from the agitation leaching plant, 5,963 ounces from heap leach operations and 8 ounces from SART processing.
The production of the precious metal increased by 52 percent in comparison with the same period in 2014, when 11,318 ounces of gold were produced. The company plans to extract some 70,000 - 75,000 ounces of gold by 2015 end.
The whole year production of the company in 2014 stood at 60,285 ounces of gold, which is 16 percent more than in 2013, when 52,107 ounces were produced.
Copper production for the first three months totaled 182 tons from SART processing. Silver production in this period totaled 1,950 ounces with 388 ounces from the agitation leaching plant, 208 ounces from heap leaching operations and 1,354 ounces from SART processing.
CEO Reza Vaziri said this highly credible performance for the quarter shows that the various initiatives taken during 2014 to improve production performance are now starting to show positive results.
"In line with this, we are making good progress on the building of our small scale flotation plant and the necessary modifications to enable it to process the tailings of the agitated leach plant. We expect the plant to be commissioned in Q3 2015,” he added.
During the first quarter, the company sold 17,206 ounces of gold at an average of $1,214 per ounce.
Copper concentrate shipments to customers in the period totaled 272 dry metric tons, containing 162 tons of copper.
The net debt -- interest-bearing loans and borrowings less cash and cash equivalents - totaled $50.7 million on March 31, 2015.
Anglo-Asian Mining has 75 tons of dry copper concentrate and 550 tons of wet copper concentrate stockpiles ready to sell.
The company has the right to develop six deposits in the south-west of Azerbaijan - Gadabay, Ordubad, Gosha Bulag, Gyzyl Bulag, Vezhnali, and Soyutlu- under a production sharing agreement signed in August 1997 with Azerbaijan's government.
The resource base of the company exceeds 36 tons of gold, 292 tons of silver and 94.000 tons of copper.
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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews’s staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar
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