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LONDON (Alliance News) - Landore Resources Ltd Tuesday said its pretax loss widened in the first half of 2015 after its exploration and administrative costs rose as it pushes forward with its three-stage plan for its Canadian mining project.
The precious and base metal explorer operating in North America, which does not currently generate any revenue, reported a GBP1.2 million pretax loss in the first six months of 2015, widening from the GBP809,560 loss a year earlier.
The wider loss was caused by administrative expenses rising to GBP715,773 from GBP468,664 and exploration costs increasing to GBP466,518 from GBP376,479, both partially offset by finance costs falling to GBP1,314 from GBP34,121.
The group has no debt but will need to raise further equity in order to carry out its exploration and development activities, and also for working capital, as its cash balance at the end of June stood at a lowly GBP208,304.
Landore is focussing on the Junior Lake nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE project in Canada, with the aim of growing its resource base to over 100,000 tonnes of nickel equivalent to ultimately sell the project to a third party or enter into a joint venture partnership to develop the project.
Currently, the project has 55,008 tonnes of nickel equivalent, over 93% of which is classed as an indicated resource, suggesting the company still has a long way to go before it can fulfil its strategy.
Landore is currently looking at the B4-7 exploration target, which is thought to contain another 20,000 tonnes of nickel equivalent and the Alpha Zone adjacent to the B-47 target, which is expected to "add significant tonnage" to the B-47 target.
Landore has initiated a mineral potential investigation and geophysics review on the Junior Lake property, where an independent consultant will re-assess the Alpha Zone and B-47 target to provide recommendations for further exploration including drilling, geotechnical and metallurgical works, which should be ready next week, the company said.
Following the completion of these studies, Landore will commence phase 2 of its works programme consisting of metallurgical and geotechnical studies for optimisation of processing and pit parameters, together with drilling to test prospective geophysical targets.
The third phase of works, currently scheduled to commence in the first quarter of 2016, consists of a definition drilling programme as per the independent engineers' recommendations to bring the exploration targets and Alpha Zone into the B-47 resource.
Landore shares were down 6.2% to 0.680 pence per share on Tuesday morning.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
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