Metals Exploration says Runruno Gold project's ramp-up slower than expected

Metals Exploration's shares have dived more than 16% after revealing mining and processing operations at Runruno Gold project are ramping-up slower than expected.

The company said this was almost entirely due to a prolonged period of incessant rainfall, along with other factors that had restricted the effective mining of waste materials.

"This has in turn adversely impacted the grade and sulphur content of ore available for processing," said Metals Exploration in a statement.

"Mechanically both the mining fleet and the processing plant have operated soundly," the company said, adding the project remained in its test-running and debugging phase.

At 14:13 GMT, shares in AIM-Metals Exploration were down 16.22% to 3.88p each.