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Gold producer increased production by some 40 pct

22 July 2014 13:00 (UTC+04:00)
Gold producer increased production by some 40 pct

By Nigar Orujova

Anglo Asian Mining plc, a company that extracts precious metals in Azerbaijan, has increased its gold production by about 40 percent in the second quarter of 2014, the company reported on July 18.

The company produced 15,736 ounce of gold in this period. This comes as in the first quarter the company produced some 11,318 ounce of gold.

According to the company, 10,849 ounce of gold was produced from the agitation leaching plant and 4,883 ounce from heap leach operations. Meanwhile, four ounce came from the Sulphidisation, Acidification, Recycling and Thickening plant.

In the second quarter, the company sold 13,142 ounce of gold at an average of $1,292 per ounce. In the first quarter of 2014, some 10,403 ounce of the gold production was sold at $1,303 per ounce.

Silver production declined to 8,785 ounce in this period, while 13,139 ounce of silver was produced in the first quarter.

Copper production for the mentioned period from SART totalled 228 tonnes - a 62 percent increase to the previous quarter that ended with 141 tonnes of copper.

Copper concentrate shipments totalled 523 dry metric tonnes, containing 280 tonnes of copper; 13,218 ounces of silver; and 1.14 ounces of gold in the second quarter.

The company concluded the first half of 2014 with production of 27,054 ounce of gold, 21,924 ounce of silver and 369 tonnes of copper.

Anglo Asian CEO Reza Vaziri said: "We are pleased to report a significant increase in gold and copper production for the second quarter of 2014 at our gold, copper, and silver mine in Azerbaijan."

"We had a slow start during the first half of 2014 production at Gadabay. But we are now experiencing a month on month production improvements. We believe that with our cost saving initiatives such as reductions in cyanide costs and increased processing capacity at Gadabay, our performance will be much better in the second half of 2014."

The company has also entered into an exclusive sales contract with Industrial Minerals SA, a Geneva based integrated trading, mining and logistics group, for its copper concentrates. The contract is aimed at ensuring future sales revenues from this production stream.

Under the terms of the sales agreement, Industrial Minerals will purchase both dry and wet copper concentrates.

The copper sales from Gadabay reached the record $6.6 million in 2013.

Anglo-Asian Mining has 75 tonnes of dry copper concentrate and 550 tonnes of wet copper concentrate stockpiles ready to sell. Gadabay is expected to exceed its target to produce 595 tonnes of copper this year.

"In line with our improving production profile from Gadabay and Gosha, we remain confident that we will achieve our FY 2014 gold production target of 62,000 - 67,000 ounces and copper production of 750 tonnes," Vaziri said.

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 tonnes of gold, 292 tonnes of silver and 94.000 tonnes of copper.

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