Eurasia Mining PLC re-draws mining agreement in Russia platinum mine

Eurasia Mining plc has renegotiated the terms of its mining agreement for the West Kytlim alluvial platinum mine in Russia.

In return for a transfer of the mining rights Russian firm SKRS has agreed to new production targets under a 17 year schedule.

Next year will see a second washplant come on stream and within five years the aim is to have four running to meet the production targets set down in the new agreement.

In addition, SKRS will put up US$1mln through an interest free loan for exploration though the 70:30 revenue split between SKRS and Eurasia’s local subsidiary KK remains unchanged.

Production in 2017 is forecast at 100kg of platinum of which Eurasia’s share is 30%.

Christian Schaffalitzky, Eurasia’s managing director, said: “It was imperative from a KK point of view to ensure the contractor deploys the necessary capital to allow the project to expand, at no cost to our shareholders, in the second year of production.

“A further positive result from this new arrangement is that the contractor has committed to support exploration expenditure by means of a loan to KK, and this without a review of the revenue split. This work is essential to ensure sufficient supply of ore to the washplants.”

Trial mining in 2016 produced 364oz of platinum, but notable was the fact that grades were 20% higher than the amount shown in the reserves for West Kytlim.

source: proactiveinvestors.co.uk