LONDON (Alliance News) - Aureus Mining Inc said Tuesday its lender group has given the company a further extension to the company's debt repayment deadline, adding it has submitted mine plans to its creditors to hopefully form the basis of new discussions.
The company's lenders, FirstRand Bank Ltd, Nedbank Ltd and the Export Credit Insurance Corp of South Africa Ltd, have given Aureus another final credit approval to delay a repayment that was due on Friday to the end of May.
The original repayment was due at the end of January, but Aureus's lenders have given numerous extensions, as Aureus looked to finalise its updated mine plan for the New Liberty gold mine in Liberia.
On Tuesday, Aureus said it has completed a number of mine plan scenarios at varying gold prices, and it has submitted these to the lenders as the basis for discussions to agree a new debt repayment schedule.
Further details are expected to be announced shortly.
Although Aureus is still finalising the updated mine plan for New Liberty, the company declared commercial production from the mine at the start of March, when it said the operation produced 4,500 ounces in the first 14 days, contributing to the 19,200 ounces produced year-to-date at the time.
The plant was also operating at a stable run-rate in-line with design specifications when commercial production was launched, with recoveries continuing to be "in excess of 90%". However, the plant was still being finished off and optimised, suggesting production levels would continue to improve moving forward.
That will become clear soon, as Aureus also decided to begin reporting its production results on a quarterly basis when New Liberty started commercial operations.
The mine was producing and shipping gold to customers as far back as July last year, but Aureus fell far short of its target to produce 27,000 ounces of gold from the mine during 2015 after only managing to produce 17,172 ounces over the course of the year. Aureus said it would have produced and sold more gold in 2015 if it didn't suffer problems with equipment failures or face the issues it experienced during the commissioning phase of the operation.
Aureus reported a cash balance of USD7.1 million at the end of 2015 after drawing down USD30.0 million of debt during the year.
Shares in Aureus were up 2.1% at 6.38 pence on Tuesday afternoon.
By Hannah Boland; hannahboland@alliancenews.com; @Hannaheboland. Updated by Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance.
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