BAKU

Azerbaijan’s leading gold mining company, Anglo Asian Mining Plc, said that its operations were unaffected by the situation in Ukraine and recent international sanctions levied against Russia.

Russia, which came under western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, is one of Azerbaijan’s key trading partner. Russia’s financial markets have been thrown into turmoil. Fitch, Moody’s, S&P downgraded Russia’s sovereign rating to junk, FTSE Russell and MSCI decided to remove Russian equities from all their indexes and many western companies left the Russian market or suspended operations there.

“The company expects no material impact on its supply chain or operations due to the conflict in Ukraine, but will continue to monitor events on a regular basis,” Anglo Asian Mining said in a statement.

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

Earlier this month, the company said it had discovered a new sub-vertical gold vein, “Hasan”, to the south of the main Gosha gold mine. The discovery was made by surface drilling to the south of the main Gosha mine and the vein could be easily accessed from existing underground mine workings.

It added that an evaluation of the existing Vejnaly mine and plant in the restored contract area in Zangilan was also progressing at pace. Ore production from the new gold vein at Gosha and the Vejnaly mine is anticipated in the second half of this year.

“Current full-year 2022 metal production from existing Gedabek operations is forecast to be between 54,000 to 58,000 gold equivalent ounces, which will be supplemented by production from Vejnaly and Gosha,” the company said in a statement.

The company reported a decline in gold production in the first nine months of the last year. 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.

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

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