LONDON (Alliance News) - Central Asia Metals PLC met its production targets for all three metals, the company said on Wednesday, in a "transformational" year.
CAM's 2018 output for copper fell slightly to 14,049 tonnes from 14,103 tonnes, though it only owned the Sasa mine in Macedonia for two months of 2017.
For zinc, output rose to 22,532 tonnes from 21,585 tonnes year-on-year, while lead output slipped marginally to 29,388 tonnes from 29,881 tonnes.
For 2019, CAM is guiding for 12,500 tonnes to 13,500 tonnes of copper, and 22,000 tonnes to 24,000 tonnes of zinc.
CAM expects lead production for 2019 to come in between 28,000 tonnes and 30,000 tonnes.
As well as Macedonia's Sasa mine, CAM owns the Kounrad dump leach, solvent extraction, and electro-winning copper recovery plant in Kazakhstan.
Chief Executive Nigel Robinson said: "2018 has been transformational for us, as we have operated both of our assets for a full year, meeting our production targets for the three base metals - copper, zinc and lead.
"We are also encouraged by the results of the exploration drilling at Sasa and look forward to demonstrating the overall outcome of this work in an updated JORC compliant mineral resource estimate during the current quarter," he continued.
"While we encountered copper mineralisation at Shuak, we believe this is unlikely to be sufficiently material in terms of scale for us to develop. However, our business development activities gathered momentum during the second half of 2018 and we have been encouraged by some of the opportunities that we have reviewed."
During 2018, CAM finished a second season of exploring at Shuak, in northern Kazakhstan. It has now decided not to press ahead, it will return the asset to its current 20% shareholders.
Shares were 2.0% higher on Wednesday morning at a price of 225.50 pence each.
Central Asia Metals (CAML)