Lithium mine developer Kodal Minerals PLC (LON:KOD) said it had made “excellent progress” towards the delivery of its first mining operation at the Bougouni project.
As a pre-revenue company, the emphasis in the company’s interim results for the six months to the end of September was naturally on the progress made operationally rather than on the numbers.
The period saw the company publish its maiden mineral resource, which placed Bougouni in the top 15 lithium projects globally.
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“2018 has been a year of intense activity and delivery as we move closer to becoming West Africa's newest lithium producer,” said Bernard Aylward, chief executive officer of Kodal Minerals.
“Since acquiring our Bougouni Lithium Project in late 2016, the board and operational team have implemented an ambitious development strategy aimed at delivering a high quality, low capex and low opex lithium mine in as short a time-frame as practicable. To this end, 2018 has culminated in the achievement of several key milestones which have added tangible value to our asset, including declaring our maiden JORC-compliant Resource of 17.3 Mt at 1.2% Li2O, and propelling it closer to a decision to mine in 2019,” he added.
The company ended the reporting period with a cash balance of £2.38mln, versus cash of £4.09mln a year earlier. The current cash balance is £1.7mln.
The loss for the six-month period narrowed to £343,000 from £529,000 in the corresponding period of last year.
"Our work to date has highlighted that the Bougouni project has sufficient size and scale to produce attractive returns for investors with our maiden resource and associated initial engineering studies, both published in September 2018, pointing to a minimum 10-year mine life,” Aylward said.
“Of equal importance, with this quantum in mind and with a relatively simple mining and processing route identified, it is expected that capital required to construct a mining and processing operation will be modest compared to some of our lithium peers and that our proposed plant is well understood and amenable to rapid construction,” he added.