14th Jan 2016 08:48
LONDON (Alliance News) - Anglo Asian Mining PLC on Thursday said gold and copper production both rose in 2015, giving its chief executive confidence that he has delivered on the company's turnaround strategy to return the company to profitability.
Gold production in 2015 rose 19% year-on-year to 72,032 ounces from 60,285 ounces, whilst copper production increased by 24% to 969 tonnes from 784 tonnes. On the downside, Anglo Asian's least significant commodity, silver, experienced a production fall of 8% to 28,626 ounces from 31,177 ounces.
Sales in 2015 totalled 63,924 ounces of gold dore at an average price USD1,161 per ounce and 1,310 dry metric tonnes of copper concentrate to generate USD3.3 million of sales.
"This has been a significant year of growth for Anglo Asian at our flagship Gedabek mine in Azerbaijan. Gold production was the highest recorded, and we met our production target set at the beginning of 2015," said Chief Executive Reza Vaziri.
"With production at Gedabek increasing, the successful launch of our flotation plant in the third quarter of 2015 and our continuing plant optimization to improve efficiencies and cost controls, I believe we have delivered on our turnaround strategy this year to return Anglo Asian to profitability," he added.
Net debt at the end of 2015 stood at USD49.2 million after falling from USD52.4 million at the end of 2014.
Alongside its full-year production and sales results, Anglo Asian also released its figures for the fourth quarter of 2015, the first full quarter that the new flotation plant was up and running.
Fourth quarter gold production fell year-on-year to 17,930 ounces from 18,164 ounces. Of total gold production in the quarter, 12,966 ounces came from the agitation leach plant and 4,539 ounces from its heap leach operations. The new plant contributed 335 ounces, it said.
Copper production in the quarter rose to 335 tonnes from 216 tonnes, with the new flotation plant contributing 130 tonnes of that total. Silver production experienced the biggest rise to 17,710 ounces from only 4,439 ounces a year earlier, with 9,263 ounces coming from the flotation plant.
Fourth quarter sales were similar, with gold sales totalling 15,759 ounces at an average price of USD1,108 per ounce - considerably lower than the average price achieved over the whole of 2015. Copper concentrate sales in the quarter totalled 425 dry metric tonnes containing 235 tonnes of copper. Flotation copper sales came in at 392 dry metric tonnes, yielding USD600,000 in revenue.
Anglo Asian shares were up 5.4% to 5.14 pence per share on Thursday morning.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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