Production starts at Anglo Asia’s Ugur openpit mine

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim-listed Anglo Asia has progressed its Ugur openpit mine at its Gedabek licence, in western Azerbaijan, from discovery to production in one year.

The company on Wednesday announced the start of production at Ugur, reporting production of 212 oz/d of gold doré in the first ten days of this month.

CEO Reza Vaziri said in a statement that Ugur’s impact on gold doré production had already been significant, noting that the average daily ounces of gold produced as doré had more than doubled in September, compared with the previous eight months.

"Bringing Ugur into production now, while we undertake the previously reported optimisation and expansion initiatives across our wider Gedabek licence area, will offset the anticipated decrease in gold production from our main Gedabek openpit due to the changing composition of the ore. With this in mind, we are pleased to reconfirm our production forecast of 64 000 to 72 000 gold equivalent ounces in 2017…,” he stated.

Anglo Asia’s in-house exploration team discovered the new mineral occurrence last year and named it Ugur, which means good luck or success in the Azeri language. The deposit is about 3 km northwest from the company’s main processing facilities at Gedabek.

The company initiated extensive exploration activities in the fourth quarter of 2016 to define the resource and reserves potential of the deposit. This work resulted in the completion of a Joint Ore Reserve Committee-compliant resource of 199 000 oz of gold and 1.05-million ounces of silver.