BAKU

Azerbaijan’s leading gold mining company, Anglo Asian Mining Plc, reported a decline in gold production in the first nine months of this year but said it remains on track to achieve its production targets for the full year.

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

The company said gold production declined to 37,096 ounces in January-September 2021 from 43,384 ounces in the same period last year.

The total production of gold-equivalent ounces (GEO), which includes other metals, declined to 48,487 GEO from 50,702 GEO.

Copper production increased in the first three quarters to 1,906 tonnes from 1,895 tonnes in January-September 2020. Silver production rose to 115,843 ounces from 89,564 ounces.

In the third quarter alone, the company produced 12,847 ounces of gold, 16,316 GEOs, 573 tonnes of copper and 36,912 ounces of silver.

Anglo Asian projects that total metal production in 2021 will be in a range of 64,000-72,000 GEOs. Last year’s total output was 67,249 GEOs.

In April, Anglo Asian Mining extended its contract with the government for five years for the Gedabek mine.

Earlier this month, the company got the right to explore three more resource-rich deposits in Azerbaijan with a combined area of 882 square kilometres.

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.

“We made considerable progress in increasing our resources during the period and are now presented with several compelling growth opportunities. The high-quality Zafar deposit, and three exciting new contract areas, significantly strengthen our copper inventories. These will underpin our future long-term production and transition to a mid-tier producer,” Reza Vaziri, the company CEO, said in a statement.

Azerbaijan 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.