Anglo Asian Regulatory News (AAZ)

15 Feb 2007 07:01

Anglo Asian Mining PLC15 February 2007 15 February 2007 ANGLO ASIAN MINING PLC ('Anglo Asian' or 'the Company') AAZ COMPLETES GEDABEK SCOPING STUDY Anglo Asian Mining PLC (AIM:AAZ) the gold and copper development company withprojects in Azerbaijan, is pleased to announce that a scoping study has beencompleted on the Gedabek gold-copper-silver property. The scoping study concludes that the optimal treatment for Gedabek ore is acombination of open pit mining and heap leaching. This is a very positiveoutcome for the Company as heap leaching requires lower capital expenditure andoperating costs than the originally proposed conventional CIL technology. Resulting from the study the key outcomes are: • Submission of a 'Notice of Discovery and its Commerciality', under the terms of the Production Sharing Agreement ('PSA'), for the Gedabek property to the Azerbaijan Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources later this month. The effect of this submission will be to commence the fifteen year period of development and production at Gedabek as defined in the PSA • The Gedabek project will now move to feasibility, which is expected to be completed in Q2 2007 with construction targeted to begin in Summer 2007 • The Company will sell the CIL (Carbon-in-Leach) plant that is containerised and located in Singapore. It is now considered that the CIL plant previously purchased for another property is not appropriate for Gedabek. The Directors believe that given the current buoyant state of the gold mining sector the sale of the plant will be profitable in relation to the cost of the plant. The highlights of the study are: • Annual gold production rate of 55,000 to 70,000 oz for a minimum of five years • Capital costs are not expected to exceed US$25 million • Cash operating costs are expected to be less than US$275 per oz • The following consultants were used to prepare the scoping study: • SRK Consulting (resource estimate) • SGS Lakefield (metallurgy) • Gekko Systems (metallurgy) • Knights Piesold (design and geotechnical) • Various other independent consultants (mine planning, metallurgy, economics, environmental) Funding • Anglo Asian held cash balances of US$5.5 million as at 31 January 2007 • Proceeds from the sale of the CIL plant will also be available to fund the construction of the mine • Local or international banks will be targeted to source the balance of the funding requirement • Recent cost reduction measures have reduced the forecast monthly cash spend to under $0.4 million Other properties Anglo Asian is continuing to investigate the potential within specific areas ofits other Azerbaijan properties at Ordubad and Gosha. Mr Gordon Lewis has approved the content of this announcement. He is aprofessionally qualified mining engineer with over 30 years of relevantexperience in the mining industry and is a member of the Australasian Instituteof Mining and Metallurgy. -Ends- For further details, please contact: Anglo Asian Mining PLC Gordon Lewis, Chief Executive +994 12 499 3350 Richard Round, Finance Director +44 1525 211 988 Numis Securities Limited John Harrison +44 20 7776 1590 Parkgreen Communications Victoria Thomas +44 20 7851 7480 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange