Blencowe Resources PLC (LSE:BRES) shares headed higher after the company trumpeted excellent progress at its Orom-Cross graphite project in Uganda in its half-year results.
Despite the challenges of Covid, particularly its impact on travel, the company said it has made substantial progress and will continue to do so ahead as further milestones are delivered.
The six months to the end of March saw the company deliver a preliminary economic assessment of the Orom-Cross project that will be augmented by a pre-feasibility study - due to be published in the middle of this year.
Meanwhile, an extensive second diamond drilling programme at Orom-Cross in the second half of 2021 delivered an updated JORC [industry standard] mineral resource of 24.5mln tonnes at 6.0% graphite, which was a 50% increase to the maiden JORC resource delivered in 2021.
The company said it has been working continuously with graphite technical experts SGS Lakeside in Canada to complete metallurgical test work showing what quality of concentrate may be delivered at Orom-Cross and the results for this work have been outstanding.
The concentrate will be a premium grade product, and the specific attributes within this should ensure the end products are attractive to a wide range of end-users, Blencowe said.
Technical data sheets are being prepared to send to prospective end-users across various industry sectors to gauge their initial interest in various Orom-Cross products.
As a pre-revenue company, the profit & loss figures are not especially meaningful but showed that exploration costs in the reporting period rose to £2,744 from £1,999 in the corresponding period 12 months earlier while administrative fees and other expenses were broadly stable at £331,617 compared to £304,238 the previous year.
The loss before tax narrowed to £356,336 from £629,681.
Shares in Blencowe were up 3.1% at 3.35p in early deals.