www.cgamining.com
CGA Mining (ASX:CGX, TSX:CGA) and its subsidiaries, is a producing gold mining company, with its principal asset being the +200,000 ounce per annum Masbate Gold Mine in the Philippines. The Masbate Gold Project has total resources of approximately 7.7m ounces and and reserves of 3m ounces.
The Masbate Gold Project is the largest operating gold project in the Philippines. Construction on the process plant was successfully completed in February 2009, less than 2 years after acquisition of the project, with the construction and installation of the power plant completed in April 2009. First gold was poured on 12 May 2009, with over 1 tonne of gold poured by September 09 and total production in excess of 150,000 ounces in the first year of operation. The project is forecast to produce over 200,000 ounces per annum and an expansion to 6.5mtpa is planned in 2010/2011 to further increase the production profile of the project.
The Company is focussed on enhancing the value of the Masbate Gold Project by both production growth and an aggressive exploration program on the highly prospective tenements and identifying new growth opportunities, through judicious and profitable acquisition programmes.
CGA Mining on track to produce 200,000oz gold per annum at Masbate
CGA Mining (ASX: CGX, TSX: CGA) has completed the supplementary crushing circuit at the Masbate Gold Mine in the Philippines and first ore has been fed into the circuit.
CGA is completing a US$15 million investment program designed to upsize throughput to 6.5 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) at Masbate and the company remains on track to produce 200,000 ounces gold per annum.
The company said the circuit ran well and this week will see the throughput gradually ramped up to design.
The supplementary crusher consists of a jaw crusher combined with a secondary and tertiary cone crushers and has been installed to deliver 12 millimetre product to the grinding circuit.
Initially this will be ideal direct feed for the ball mills whilst the SAG mill is brought back on line and ultimately will be used to ensure 6.5mtpa throughputs are maintained.
Once this is completed and the SAG mill brought back on line the project is forecast to produce at a rate of over 200,000 ounces per annum. In the year ended 30 June 2011 the mill produced 190,033 ounces.
The Masbate Gold Project was successfully constructed with first gold poured mid 2009. The mining contract was awarded to Leighton Holdings (ASX: LEI), the largest mining contractor in the world.
The project has a total indicated resource base of 4.55 million ounces of gold, total inferred resource base of 3.22 million ounces of gold and a probable reserve of 3.03 million ounces of gold.
CGA delivered a bumper set of numbers in the company's annual report for financial year 2011.
The stand out metric is a 307% increase in net profit to $65.1 million, which was generated from a 51% boost in gold and silver sales to $235.3 million. The gross profit jumped 70% to $80.4 million.
CGA now has a war chest of $204.6 million in cash and liquid assets - almost double from a year before, and has an aggressive exploration strategy that is planning to undertake 172,000 metres of drilling at a cost of US$20 million over the next twelve months.
The company is also looking at acquiring new gold projects with a substantial initial resource with the capacity to grow materially.
