www.noventa.net
Noventa's strategy is to be the world's largest, low cost industrial scale supplier of tantalum concentrate, a rare speciality metal widely used in the consumer electronics industry. There is currently a shortage of tantalum supply and stock levels in the industry are being run down. Noventa is in a unique position to expand production to meet the industries needs.
The Jersey based Company's Marropino mine in Mozambique resumed production in April 2010, and the Company has now embarked on a Strategic Plan which it believes will build the foundations of a long-term, profitable, cash generative and sustainable business.
Noventa plans to restart Marropino tantalum mine in Mozambique in March/April 2010, seeks new CFO
Noventa Ltd (AIM: NVTA), the tantalum junior with assets in Mozambique, said it is currently planning to restart the Marropino mine around March or April 2010 and is actively looking to recruit key staff including metallurgists and engineers for its future plans.
This will also include a new chief financial officer, as Martin Hinxman has decided to pursue alternative opportunities following the decision to relocate the operational headquarters of Noventa to Maputo, Mozambique. He will remain in his current role until a suitable replacement can be identified and appointed.
The group is working on designing an exploration program to evaluate its other license areas in Mozambique. The board is currently expecting this work to start in the first half of 2010.
Noventa is continuing its thorough evaluation of the ore body, mining equipment and metallurgical plant at the Marropino mine to maximize the recovery of tantalum oxide (tantalite) from the ore body. The evaluation includes extensive and ongoing laboratory testing of ore body samples and metallurgical production equipment.
The feasibility of processing and recovering tantalite from stockpiles of the oversized material and tailings generated by previous mining and processing operations is also being evaluated.
In a separate statement today, Noventa said the mine has been connected with electricity from the Mozambique national electricity supply grid. Electricidade de Moçambique will however continue to carry out maintenance and repairs, particularly on this new stretch of dedicated power line. During these periods power will not be available to the mine.
The group in October raised a total of £2.12 million through the placing and open offer of 53.059 million new ordinary shares. Qualifying shareholders took up 23 percent of the shares under the open offer, and it received a high level of interest from new potential investors for well in excess of the number of offer shares available.
Marropino was placed on care and maintenance in May 2008. In the October statement, Noventa declared it was mulling all options regarding the asset, including reopening the mine with modifications to existing plant and mine plan, a new fixed plant with a capacity of 450,000 pounds of tantalum per annum, three modular plants with annual producing capacities of 150,000 pounds, outsourcing processing to a third party and a trade sale.
Its favoured option, however, was to reopen Marropino, because it considered the medium term outlook for tantalum as positive, as one third of global primary production was withdrawn over the preceding nine months and the demand for the metal, which is used in the manufacturing of capacitors for mobile phones, motherboards and audio and video equipment, is projected to outstrip supply in 2010 and 2011, while the production of microelectronic goods is projected to increase.
