Ariana’s Turkey JV outperforms feasibility expectations

The Kiziltepe mine, which Aim-listed Ariana Resources owns in a joint venture with Turkey’s Proccea Construction, has delivered its best-to-date production performance, with gold output climbing to 7 171 oz in the June quarter.

The gold production was a 47% increase on the first quarter’s output of 4 866 oz.

“The results of the past quarter are our best to date, outperforming overall quarterly feasibility-study expectations by 92%” said MD Kerim Sener.

Total ore processed for the quarter increased from 44 897 t in the first quarter to 49 325 t in the second quarter, at an average head grade to the plant of 4.77 g/t.

Quarterly openpit ore mined was 70 400 t, at an average mined grade of 4.18 g/t gold, and total material movement for the quarter was 758 000 t.

The average metallurgical plant recovery for the quarter remained consistently high at 94.3%.

“This production rate has ensured a very healthy stockpile position representing over four months of mill feed. Processing rates were also maintained at the highest rates through the period, which on an annualised basis suggests that the processing plant is already capable of achieving throughput of almost 200 000 t/y, or 33% above the designed rate,” Sener said.

The JV is chasing a production target of 20 000 oz for the year, which Ariana said was expected to be met.

Source: miningweekly