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LONDON (Alliance News) - Tertiary Minerals PLC on Wednesday reported a widened annual loss due to an impairment of deferred exploration costs at its Swedish Storuman fluorspar project.
In the financial year ended September 30, the AIM-listed mineral exploration and development miner's pretax loss widened to GBP2.3 million from a GBP395,532 loss the year before.
Tertiary Minerals' revenue decreased 9.2% in the period to GBP218,841 from GBP241,024.
In the year, the company booked a GBP2.0 million impairment on its Storuman project in northern Sweden.
The company is building a position in the fluorspar sector. Fluorspar is used to make lenses for microscopes, telescopes, and cameras. Tertiary Minerals' projects contain a total of 13.1 million tonnes of fluorspar.
Tertiary Minerals 100% owned Storuman has seen its exploration mine permit affected by recent Swedish mining case law, as the country's mining inspectorate continues to review a grant originally issued in 2016.
The company said the remaining issue stopping the grant of the exploration permit is a "perceived conflict" between the location of a storage facility at the project and reindeer herding activities.
Tertiary Minerals is "frustrated by a refusal on the part of the reindeer herding community to engage directly with the company and the failure of the county government to adequately address the company's plans for mitigation of this conflict".
Tertiary Minerals is confident the grant of the exploration permit will "eventually" be confirmed.
"It is pleasing to see the recovery in the fluorspar market continue in 2018 but It has been a year of frustratingly slow progress for our Storuman mine permit re-assessment process," said Managing Director Richard Clemmey.
"We have made good progress in establishing our operations will not affect the nearby Natura 2000 area and that reindeer husbandry is able to co-exist alongside the open pit mine, but we still face objections from the County Administration Board regarding the location of the tailings storage facility," he added.
"We, together with our Swedish consultants and legal team, strongly disagree with the CAB's position and so remain hopeful for a positive resolution of this matter."
Tertiary Minerals said fluorspar prices "continued to rise" during the year with the Chinese benchmark mid-price of acid-grade fluorspar hitting a seven-year high, now at USD565 per tonne from USD410 last year.
The company said the increase is "being driven by environmentally motivated mine closures in China and an increase in the value of downstream value-added products".
Clemmey added: "Looking forward to 2019, with the continued support from Possehl we look ahead to progressing the scoping study on our large MB project in Nevada as well as continuing our evaluation of potential complimentary acquisition targets."
Tertiary Minerals signed memorandum of understanding in 2017 with commodity trader Possehl Erzkontor GmbH & Co KG, a wholly owned subsidiary of CREMER.
Shares in Tertiary Minerals were down 4% Wednesday at 0.48 pence each.
