Cradle Arc Plc (LON:CRA) shares jumped in late-afternoon trading Monday after it secured a loan facility to improve processing facilities at its Mowana copper project in Botswana.
The miner said it had obtained a loan of US$2mln from its largest shareholder, PenMin Botswana Proprietary Limited controlled indirectly by Cradle’s chief executive Kevin van Wouw, to create an inventory of spare parts and improve and rehabilitate the processing facilities at Mowana.
READ: Cradle Arc looking at financing options to improve processing facilities at Mowana
Specific areas to be addressed include pumping, piping, conveying and process control remediation and installation of standby equipment in parallel in areas where a breakdown has an immediate impact on production.
The project has recently suffered from a series of breakdowns and interruptions at the processing plant in the third quarter that had “adversely affected” the company’s production in the period.
The improvement work would begin immediately and was not expected to materially interrupt production, with van Wouw saying the work would allow the group to achieve a “significant improvement” in throughput and recovery in the fourth quarter relative to the third.
In the third quarter, total production was reported at 712 tonnes of contained copper, 29.5% higher than the second quarter.
Shares were up 4.1% at 1.2p.