BAKU

The London-listed Anglo Asian Mining Plc (AAM), engaged in mining gold, silver and copper in Azerbaijan, got the right to explore three more resource-rich deposits in the country with a combined area of 882 square kilometres, the company said.

Anglo Asian Mining produces gold at Gedabek, Gosha and other mines in Azerbaijan in a joint venture with the state in which the London-listed company holds a 51-percent stake.

Two of the new concessions border the existing Gedabek and Gosha contract areas. They contain the large-scale Garadagh porphyry deposit and the adjacent Xarxar copper deposit and assessment of these valuable assets will start immediately.

The company said that the development would follow the finalisation of the ore reserve estimates and it anticipated ore to be extracted by open-pit mining. 

The third new concession area is called Demirli and is adjacent to the Kyzlbulag contract area in the Nagorno-Karabakh economic region. The Demirli concession contains the Demirli copper-molybdenum deposit. According to an unsubstantiated report in January 2016, the deposit contained an estimated 275,000 tonnes of copper and 3,200 tonnes of molybdenum.

“The agreement is a transformational milestone in the history of the company with the Garadagh porphyry deposit alone containing over 300,000 tonnes of copper with an in-situ value of over $3.0 billion at current prices,” Anglo Asian Mining said in a statement.

“This acquisition underpins the company’s vision of becoming a mid-tier gold and copper miner.”

Anglo Asian reported a decline in gold production in the first half of this year, but said it remained on track to achieve its production targets for the full year. It said gold production declined to 24,249 ounces in January-June 2021 from 27,696 ounces in the same period last year.

Copper production increased in the first half to 1,333 tonnes from 1,207 tonnes in January-June 2020. Silver production rose to 78,931 ounces from 58,603 ounces.

Azerbaijan has increased gold production in the first seven months of the year by 1.1 percent year-on-year to 2,058 kg, production of silver rose by 12.6 percent to 2,786 kg. Gold and silver mining in the country is carried out by two companies – Anglo Asian Mining and the state-owned AzerGold CJSC, established in 2015.