Centamin production at Sukari still down on last year

Centamin posted its preliminary production results for the quarter to 30 June on Monday, from its Sukari Gold Mine in Egypt, with total gold production of 124,641 ounces.

The FTSE 250 firm said that was a 14% increase on the previous quarter, though it was still 11% lower than the second quarter of 2016.

It maintained its 2017 production guidance of 540,000 ounces.

Centamin did report a record quarterly throughput rate of 3,056kt at the process plant, a 5% increase on the previous quarter.

Open pit total material movement - i.e. ore plus waste - increased by 2% on the previous quarter to 17,493kt.

The company said open pit ore production increased by 23.5% to 3,060kt at an average mined grade of 0.76g/t.

That included 222kt at 0.25g/t delivered to the dump leach pads, with the average head grade to the plant from the open pit coming in at 0.81g/t.

The run of mine ore stockpile balance increased by 152kt to 538kt at the end of the period.

Centamin’s underground operation delivered 293kt of ore at an average mined grade of 8.8g/t, the board reported, with ore from stoping standing at 174kt at 11.0g/t, and ore from development 119kt at 5.6g/t.

“As previously outlined in the 2016 full year results and Q1 2017 results, mining activity in the open pit during the first part of 2017 has focussed on the cut back of the east wall with correspondingly low ore grades reported from these sectors,” said CEO Andrew Pardey.

“This continued into the second quarter however during the latter part of the quarter higher grade was accessed from the open pit, as scheduled.”

Pardey said mining of higher grades from the open pit was expected to continue for the balance of 2017.

“Underground mining continued to perform well with excellent grades achieved from stoping activities.

“With the processing also continuing to deliver very strong levels of productivity, we remain on course to meet our full year 2017 production guidance of 540,000 ounces at a cash operating cost of $580 per ounce and all-in-sustaining cost of $790 per ounce.”