London South East caught up with Werner Klingenberg, CEO at AIM-listed gold recovery specialist Goldplat (GDP) and got a detailed operational update from him.
Werner felt it had been 'an extremely good quarter' in many ways despite the capacity restraints imposed by the electricity outages in South Africa. "We saw a good steady flow of supplies into Ghana" said Werner, "We also signed a good contract in South Africa, and we started construction of our Tailings Facility in South Africa which we need to complete to process our old tailings facility."
"In Ghana we continued producing around £1M of operating profit for the quarter, and unfortunately SA's performance has been impacted by the current electricity cuts being experienced in the country. Operating profits reduced to around £350,000 for the last quarter, which is basically a million less than the previous year Q2." The comparables were very strong, "but we were £500/700,000 down".
Looking at the SA electricity supply outages, generating sufficient electricity supply through diesel generators wouldn't be a problem he thought. However "we don't think it is economically feasible to invest the amount of money required or to burn the amount of diesel required. We would rather increase the capacity when we do have electricity, and see if we can change some of our processes to increase the amount we can process in the available time".
GoldPlat (GDP)