28th Oct 2015 09:55
LONDON (Alliance News) - Wolf Minerals Ltd Wednesday said it is continuing to ramp-up, optimise and test the new operation at the Drakelands mine in Devon following on from commissioning activities earlier this year.
The mine is at the company's Hemerdon tungsten project in Devon in the UK, and during the last quarter the company successfully took over the operation from the company that constructed it and began shipping concentrate to customers in Europe and the US.
Wolf Minerals said it spent AUD11.8 million on the mine during the most recent quarter ended September 30. Currently, the company is operating the mine and processing plant on a trial basis for seven days a week.
It plans to conduct that trial until March 2016, and if successful, will make the arrangement permanent. Prior to the test, the plant was only allowed to run for 5.5 days of the week. Wolf believes by increasing the uptime it will lead to better efficiencies and it said it will not need to spend any further funds in order to do this.
Full production from the Drakelands mine is expected to occur in "early 2016".
By the end of September, Wolf said it had fully drawn down its GBP75.0 million senior debt facility, used to construct the Drakelands mine. That facility comprises of a GBP70.0 million loan and a GBP5.0 million bond facility.
Wolf shares were down 3.5% to 14.0 pence per share on Wednesday morning.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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