9th Sep 2014 12:38
LONDON (Alliance News) - Mariana Resources Ltd Tuesday reported a wider loss for its last financial year due to exchange losses and higher costs for items including employee expenses, professional service costs and travel expenses, and reiterated that it is considering joint ventures as it continues to experience a downturn in the exploration market.
The company reported a pretax loss of GBP3.8 million for the six months ended June 30, 2014, wider than the GBP2.5 million loss it made in the first six months of 2013. Its revenue rose slightly to GBP42,096, from GBP35,304, but costs rose for a variety of items. It had written down exploration costs of GBP1.2 million a year earlier and didn't repeat that, but this year it booked a GBP3.0 million exchange loss.
"The market, in general, continues to be difficult for the junior exploration sector and for commodities as a whole," Chief Executive Glen Parsons said in a statement. "Mariana is committed to its strategy despite the continued current global exploration downturn, commodity price softening and the ongoing political situation in Argentina".
In northern Peru, Mariana has focused on follow up drilling at its prospective copper-gold Condor De Oro project, where porphyry style mineralisation has been identified over a large target area, it said.
On Monday, Mariana announced it has entered into an option to earn a substantial percentage of two "potentially strategic gold tenements" in Peru, to earn up to 70% of the two sites with Tinka Resources Ltd.
At the copper-gold-silver Soledad project, Mariana completed a successful 2,084 metre diamond drill programme which tested a combination of targets, including high level porphyry, strongly mineralised quartz tourmaline breccia pipes, breccia root zones and adjacent concealed porphyry targets," it said.
In Argentina, Mariana has "continued adopting a low cost exploration strategy to develop new high grade targets on the Eastern Deseado of the Santa Cruz province, specifically around its Las Calandrias and Los Cisnes properties," said Parsons.
Mariana received a USD600,000 VAT refund from the Argentinean tax authorities, which is being used to advance its silver and gold exploration in the Santa Cruz province in southern Argentina.
"Mariana is in the process of defining drill targets (in Argentina) for potential drilling early next year, market permitting. Mariana is optimistic about the political outcomes in Argentina, however it has continued to look at potential joint venture partners over some of its portfolio," said Parsons.
"Mariana remains well positioned to continue meeting milestones on its portfolio and continues to seek out other exploration opportunities to complement and bolster its portfolio," he added.
Mariana's shares were down 3.70% to 1.95 pence per share Tuesday afternoon.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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