Christian Schaffalitzky, the chairman of Eurasia Mining plc (LON:EUA), told shareholders at today’s annual general meeting (AGM) that 2018 has been a great success.
The appointment of Techstroy as the contractor for the West Kytlim platinum and gold mine has proven to be a catalyst that has driven the project into a very successful mining season, Schaffalitzky said.
The company intends to make a further statement on West Kytlim before the end of next week but revealed that total production thus far this year is already on or around its target level for the whole of the mining season with several months of good mining conditions still to come – hopefully – in 2018.
READ Eurasia Mining starts work at its West Kytlim Project in the Ural Mountains
“Grades have also been much higher than anticipated. We estimate we are running up to a maximum of 7kg of raw platinum mine product in one-day throughput. Our collaboration with Techstroy has been positive, in that both parties are comfortable with their respective roles and responsibilities, with mine progress generally, and with earnings above initial Q1 and Q2 estimates,” the Eurasia chairman said at the AGM.
Monchetundra progress is ahead of schedule
The company said the mine permit application process for the Monchetundra project in Russia is taking less time than expected, with the application reaching the office of the prime minister (PM) just six months after the process was started.
It is not possible to estimate how long it will take to emerge from the PM’s office but the company was daring to hope that it might only be a matter of weeks rather than months, based on its experience with the West Kytlim mine application.
Schaffalitzky said that with the Monchetundra mine being so close to becoming fully permitted, financial institutions are taking a keener interest in Eurasia’s progress, which bodes well for the time when the company will need to finance development of the project.
With our Monchetundra Project so close to fully permitted we are seeing greater interest from larger financial institutions.
Indeed, assuming the mine permit is granted, the Monchetundra Mine will open a new chapter in the Company's history. pic.twitter.com/S476WoZpJ2
— Eurasia Mining (@eurasiamining) July 24, 2018
“It is our intention to add mine engineering experience and possibly additional financial experience [to the board], ideally with exposure to far eastern markets, which we increasingly see as a commercial focus for our operations and a real growth area for commercial transactions in the PGM [platinum group metals] space,” the AGM statement said.
The aim is to repeat the West Kytlim model with the much larger Monchetundra project.
Shares in Eurasia were up 15% at 0.84p heading into the final hour of trading on Tuesday.