Azerbaijan, Baku, Dec. 21st / Trend, A. Akhundov /
Anglo-Asian Mining PLC raised $30 million from the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) to construct an agitation leaching plant, company president Reza Vaziri told Trend today.
Anglo Asian Mining agreed to a further loan from the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) of $10.5 million in September. The agreement is to fund the initial stages of the construction of an agitation leaching plant.
The IBA has already provided a $7.5 million loan to the company.
Additionally, the IBA has provided Anglo Asian with a letter of intent stating that subject to internal consideration and approval, it will provide up to an additional $42 million to the company for the construction of the new agitation plant.
"The plant requires investments worth $54 million, but perhaps less will be required", he said. "We regularly attract $1-2 million from the IBA to build the plant. At this time, we have raised about $ 30 million for a new plant. According to the business plan, we will be able to return the loan in 2-2.5 years. I hope that this happens even faster."
The plant which will be built on the Gadabay gold and copper mine, is planned to be commissioned in March of 2013. Construction operations have been launched.
The plant will process ore and resources not suitable for heap leaching - a method of obtaining gold from ore that is currently in use in the field. Vat leaching technology allows for the extraction of more than 90 per cent of the gold contained in the treated ore, whereas, the figure is only about 70% for ore treated with heap leaching. According to preliminary estimates, gold recovery at the plant is expected to reach 85% in oxide ore and 69% in sulphide. However, the company continues to conduct tests geared towards the improvement of these indices. The new plant is designed to process 100 tons of ore per hour.
The first gold and silver was produced at the Gedabek deposit in May 2009.