7th Dec 2012 07:01
FRONTIER MINING LTD
("Frontier" or "the Company")
AGM Statement
Frontier Mining Ltd (AIM: FML), the AIM quoted copper company operating in Kazakhstan, will hold its Annual General Meeting today at the London Capital Club at 10.30am. After the completion of the formal proceedings, FML will provide the following update to shareholders:
Benkala
Frontier completed the construction of the 7,000 tonnes per annum plant at Benkala in August 2012. To date, Frontier has sold and shipped 692 tonnes of LME grade A Copper Cathode.
The Company is both pleased with the plant construction and the findings it has made during its pilot production phase (from August 2012), which has covered optimising the entire process from screening and secondary crushing, through agglomeration (including size, drum residence time, acid usage, etc.), leach pad design, stacking and acid consumption. Management is confident that plant capacity can be expanded to 10,000 tonnes per annum at relatively low-cost and technical risk due to the investment already incurred.
Mining and production operations at Benkala have now been suspended due to the winter, with the exception of on-going laboratory investigations to minimise production downtime and loss of process efficacy. The Company is actively investigating strategies to provide for year round operations.
South Benkala & Baitemir
Exploration programmes have progressed as planned. Management continues to work on producing updated resources for both South Benkala and Baitemir.
Outlook
Operations at Benkala are scheduled to recommence in the second quarter of 2013. Frontier is confident that all stakeholders will witness an inflection point in the Company's fortunes during the next financial year as Frontier moves into volume production at Benkala and delivers on the potential indicated by the progress made in 2012 at South Benkala and Baitemir.
Mr. Aliyev interim Chairman and CEO commented; "I am genuinely excited by the advancements made at Benkala. Having launched the project as a principal of Colville Intercorp in 2006, witnessing the acceleration of activity over the last two years it has cemented my belief in the potential of the long-term profitability that Benkala presents to shareholders. As the interim CEO and Chairman, I commit to work to maintain the momentum of success in 2013 and communicating this progress to shareholders as we execute our plans."
For further information, please contact:
Frontier Mining Ltd | George Cole | +44 (0) 20 7898 9019 |
RFC Ambrian (Broker) | Caspar Shand-Kydd Richard Morrison | +44 (0) 20 3440 6800 |
Libertas Capital (NOMAD) | Sandy Jamieson | +44 (0) 20 7569 9650 |
Walbrook PR | Lianne Cawthorne (Media Enquiries) Paul Cornelius (Investor Enquiries) | +44 (0) 20 7933 8780 |
Notes to Editor
Frontier Mining Limited is a copper company with production, development and exploration operations in Kazakhstan.
The Company's main activity is the Benkala Copper Project in North West Kazakhstan, which forms part of the Urals copper gold ore belt. Frontier has a 100% interest in Benkala through its subsidiary KazCopper LLP.
Frontier, through its wholly owned subsidiary FML Kazakhstan, also owns Baitemir, a potential copper gold porphyry deposit with associated gold and molybdenum situated on the Naimanjal exploration licence area in North East Kazakhstan.
Frontier maintains an administrative and technical office in Almaty, the former capital city of Kazakhstan and the main business centre in the South East. The Company also maintains offices in Aktyubinsk and Semipalatinsk, close to the Benkala and Baitemir operations respectively.
Benkala
A Competent Persons Report completed by Wardell Armstrong International ("WAI") in June 2010, estimated the oxide section of the Benkala project, which represents development of only ~10% of the total resource at Benkala, to have a NPV of $190 million, based on 0.5% diluted copper grade, 63% recovery and 185,000 tonnes of contained metal at a 6,000 USD per tonne copper price. Frontier will use the production platform of its operating SX-EW project to finance further evaluation and technical studies required to further expand production beyond 10,000 tonnes per annum and extend production from the oxides in addition to advancing development of the significant Benkala sulphide resources.
WAI updated their Joint Ore Reserves Committee resource estimate in February 2011, significantly increasing the measured and indicated resource for both oxide and sulphide ores. The oxide resource has increased by a total of 9.72kt to 174.38kt (+5.9%) and the sulphide resource by 65.54kt to 779.28kt (+9.2%) of copper. As well as the overall increase, both ore types now have significantly more resource in the measured category and there has been an increase in the average oxide grade percentage. In addition, the overall inferred resource has also increased by 42.8kt to 607.70kt of copper (+7.6%).
In January 2012 Frontier added the South Benkala mining area to its existing Benkala licence. The South Benkala area is approximately 10 kilometres south of Benkala and has a GKZ resource estimate of 94.5kt of oxide and 515.1kt of sulphide copper.
Baitemir
Baitemir was identified as the most attractive deposit on the Naimanjal licence area and an exploration drill program was developed to confirm the size and grades of the deposit. Frontier has now drilled almost 16,000 metres and, on the basis of positive results, has an additional 1,000 metre drilling programme for 2012. The Company is working to further define the mineral inventory, anticipating the generation of a mineral resource prepared in accordance with the guidelines of the JORC Code (2004).
Issued Share Capital
Frontier Mining's shares are traded on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.
Frontier has 1,860,913,920 ordinary shares issued.
For further information please visit: www.frontiermining.com
Related Shares:
FML.L