Eurasia Mining makes early start at Russian platinum project

Eurasia Mining announced the commencement of site works at its West Kytlim Project on Friday, kicking off the 2018 field season.

The project in Russia’s Ural Mountains will see stripping work begin immediately with terms already finalised with alluvial mining contractor OOO Techstroy of Nizhny Tagil and equipment and machinery mobilised to the site.

Techstroy will be responsible for "mining, trucking and beneficiation of platinum bearing gravels, including construction, delivery and installation of mining and processing equipment," at the project, according to Eurasia.

Sales revenues will be split 65/35% in favour of Techstroy.

Christian Schaffalitzky, chief executive of Eurasia Mining, said: "We are very pleased with this result which comes after extensive discussions, predominantly technical in nature, over the past number of months. We are very much looking forward to a successful mining season at West Kytlim and to working together with our new partners Techstroy. Site works have already commenced, in this the first week of March, a marked improvement on last year."

After the early start to operations at the Malaya Sosnovka site on the West Kytlim project, Eurasia hopes to have an opportunity to progress to the larger Kluchiki site, which contains 893,000m3 of productive gravels for 319 kilograms raw platinum.

"We can take full advantage of the full mining season at Malaya Sosnovka starting now and aim to break ground at the Kluchiki area later this summer. In a show of good faith the contractors mobilised equipment to site a week ahead of final signing of the contract,2 said Schaffalitzky.

As of 0956 GMT, Eurasia Mining’s shares were up 4.44% at 0.47p.