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(Alliance News) - Alba Mineral Resources PLC on Friday reported a narrowed interim loss thanks to lower administrative expenses and other income.
Shares in Alba Mineral were down 8.6% at 0.13 pence in London in morning trading.
The mineral exploration and development company, with projects in Greenland, Wales and Ireland said its pretax loss for the six months ended May 31 narrowed to GBP303,921 from GBP376,163.
This resulted from a reduction in administrative expenses to GBP338,463 from GBP376,163 as well as GBP34,542 of other income versus no such income the year before.
Initially, Alba Mineral had planned to undertake a surface trenching programme across ten targets at the Clogau gold mine in Wales and a drilling programme in and Amitsoq graphite project in Greenland.
Both of these plans were put on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as it was impossible to send any personnel or equipment to the sites. It did however develop and refine its programme for Clogau underground drilling and bulk sampling and seek regulatory consent for this.
This regulatory consent has been confirmed, and Alba expects to begin mobilising drilling and sampling teams to the site soon for a start date in early September.
Executive Chair George Frangeskides said: "The next phase of work at Clogau is genuinely exciting and represents the first concerted underground exploration campaign at the mine for several decades. Through this work, we hope to be able to identify new, and as yet unexploited, gold zones within or adjacent to the existing mine workings which will support a decision to re-open the mine for commercial production.
"With the gold price recently at record highs, it is certainly not a bad time to be focused on the restart of production at a gold mine."
Alba has an investment in the Horse Hill oil field in Sussex, the field development plan for which was approved in March. After the end of May, the Horse Hill operator announced it was reviewing the options for the future use of the Horse Hill-2z well, including stimulation to return it to long-term oil production, side-tracking the well to a different subsurface location, or converting it into a water re-injection well to reduce future operating costs.
At that time, the operator also confirmed plans to reperforate the Horse Hill-1 well so as to improve the rate of production. Alba Mineral said it is awaiting confirmation on the likely timelines for these well interventions.
In terms of outlook, Frangeskides said: "Despite the considerable amount of field time lost to the Coronavirus lockdown, we are now in position to be able to execute one of the most significant underground work programmes seen at the Clogau-St David's Gold Mine for several decades.
"Our other mining projects also remain on a sound footing, with JORC resources at both Thule Black Sands and Melville Bay, and renewed plans to drill a maiden JORC resource at Amitsoq in 2021. And assuming the plans to improve productivity at the two existing Horse Hill oil wells bear fruit, our investment in that asset will also begin to take on a much healthier hue, notwithstanding the recent downturn in the oil price.
"In short, Alba remains in a strong position to generate real and sustained growth across the company's portfolio of assets and investments."
By Anna Farley; annafarley@alliancenews.com
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