16th May 2011 07:00
16 May 2011 African Barrick Gold plc Reduced Capacity at Buzwagi Process Plant due to SAG Mill Motor Failure Short-Term Production Loss - Minimal Full Year Impact
Following a power outage and attempted plant restart at the Buzwagi mine, there was a malfunction in the SAG mill motor. As part of our critical spares programme, we have a replacement motor available and preparations are being made for its installation following removal of the existing motor. The current estimate is that this will take up to two weeks given the scale of the unit being replaced and the need for specialist equipment to remove and install the motors. During this time the plant will run at reduced capacity.
We estimate that the production impact in the current quarter will be approximately 10,000 ounces of gold, but we would expect to recover most of this over the second half of the year. As such, our full year production expectations for Buzwagi remain unchanged.
We are implementing a range of measures to mitigate the impact of this incident on the overall mining schedule while engineers and technicians are investigating the causes of the failure and assessing damage to the motor. We will continue to work with the state power utility TANESCO in order to seek to improve the quality and reliability of the power supply to Buzwagi in order to help prevent issues of this nature and improve the performance and throughput of the process plant. As previously communicated, we are also installing 6MW of back-up spinning diesel power which is on target to be completed by the end of July.
ENQUIRIES
For further information contact:
African Barrick Gold plc
Greg Hawkins, CEO
Andrew Wray, Head of Corp Devt & IR +44 (0)207 129 7155
Finsbury +44 (0)20 7251 3801Andrew MitchellCharles Chichester
This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an invitation or offer to underwrite, subscribe for or otherwise acquire or dispose of any securities of ABG in any jurisdiction.
This announcement includes "forward-looking statements" that express or imply expectations of future events or results. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts. These statements include, without limitation, financial projections and estimates and their underlying assumptions, statements regarding plans, objectives and expectations with respect to future production, operations, costs, products and services, and statements regarding future performance. Forward-looking statements are generally identified by the words "plans," "expect," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimates" and other similar expressions.
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ACA.L