LONDON (Alliance News) - EMED Mining Public Ltd Non-Executive Director Roger Davey said the company has made significant progress on the Rio Tinto copper mine in Spain and reiterated it remains on track ahead of the company's AGM to be held later Wednesday.
Earlier in July, the company held an EGM which resulted in shareholders approving a fund raising of GBP64.9 million via a placing in order to progress the Rio Tinto mine, and Davey said the company has made "further significant progress" at the project since then.
"These funds are sufficient to ensure the company completes the Rio Tinto copper project and the re-start of production in 2015 - firstly at 5.0 million tonnes per annum and then 7.5 million tonnes shortly thereafter and indeed we remain on track to achieve this," he said. "Since the EGM in July we have made further significant progress on site."
Davey said the mining contractor is now fully operational at the mine and is removing pre-stripping waste and delivering ore to the crusher ahead of the commissioning phases.
Resource definition drilling continues at Cerro Colorado and, in the meantime, an interim calculation report has been requested from a specialised independent firm, which will provide a rough estimate of what the resource is.
Davey said all the front-end crushing at the plant is "working smoothly" and the team is also commissioning the equipment, mainly on the grinding, flotation and concentrate sections, of the wet part of the plant.
"This is normal procedure ahead of introducing ore in the next few weeks, well ahead of the original schedule," he said.
In addition, Davey said the board is planning on hiring further non-executive directors in the next few months. The company's two financiers, Orion and Liberty will appoint a non-executive director each and two further non-executives will be appointed as independent directors.
EMED shares were down 0.7% to 4.09 pence per share on Wednesday morning.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
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