RSS UpdatesCompany Information for Petropavlovsk PLC
Company stock charts - 6 Month chart
 AIM; POG
View full financial data |
Company Statement
Petropavlovsk plc is a London-listed mining and exploration company with its principal assets located in Russia. The Group is focused on the acquisition, exploration, development and production of mineral deposits with a current focus on its precious metal deposits and, in future, the development of its iron ore assets as and when the iron ore and project finance markets recover.
The Group has a number of production and exploration assets across Russia with its principal operations located in the Amur Region, in the Russian Far East, where it has operated since 1994.
The Group currently produces gold from its own mines and from a number of joint ventures. In 2008, the Group produced 393,600 oz of gold, making it the third largest gold producer in Russia. On 22 April 2009, the Group completed its acquisition of the mining and exploration company Aricom plc.
Current Operations
Pokrovskiy - Overview
The Pokrovskiy mine is one of the largest producing gold mines (by annual production value) in the Amur Region and has been in operation for ten years, with the first gold having been recovered from the mine in 1999. The Pokrovskiy mine is currently one of the key producing assets of the Group.
The mine has a well developed infrastructure, including electricity supply, water supply and a road network. It also has a heating plant, laboratory, accommodation, a canteen and offices.
Access to the Pokrovskiy mine is either by air service from Blagoveschensk to Zeya (88 km from the mine) or by Trans-Siberian Railways from Khabarovsk (18 hours) to Tygda (10 km from the mine). The car journey from the regional capital Blagoveschensk to the mine takes approximately 7 hours.
Pioneer - Overview
The Pioneer mine is located in the Amur Region, approximately 35km from the Pokrovskiy mine. The Pioneer licence was acquired by Pokrovskiy Rudnik in 2001 and since then an extensive exploration programme has been carried out at this deposit. As a result of this, Pioneer’s first stage production facility came into production in April 2008.
After the successful ramping up of the first milling line at Pioneer and having exceeded the Company’s production forecast for the deposit in 2008, the second milling line is under construction and due for commissioning in the second half of 2009. It is expected that the mill will ramp up to 3.2 million tonnes of annual capacity by the end of 2009. The construction of the third line is also ongoing and it is expected to be commissioned in the second half of 2010. It is expected that the plant will achieve its full designed capacity of 5.4 million tonnes of oxide material in 2011 and will be converted in 2014 to treat refractory material.
Malomir
Malomir is at an advanced stage of development. The geological exploration work carried out at the Malomir licence area indicated that it consists of three separate deposits: the Malomir deposit, the Ozhidaemoye deposit and the Quartzitovoye deposit.
In 2008, the discovery of high-grade non-refractory ore at the Quartzitovoye deposit caused the Company to review its development plans for Malomir to allow this area to be explored further during the remainder of 2008 and early 2009. This discovery has significantly changed the economics of Malomir. The structure and mineralisation of the Quartzitovoye deposit are now fairly well understood and exploration will continue for further similar high-grade zones in the Malomir licence area.
Tokur
The Tokur licence area, which covers 4.8 km2, is located just 70 km away from Malomir. It was acquired by Group in 2003 and has since become an important base for the Group in this part of the Amur Region; with infrastructure from previous operations at the Tokur underground mine still in place and laboratory and mineral processing facilities on-site. This fully accredited laboratory at Tokur was built by the Group in order to assay samples from Tokur, Malomir and Albyn, as well as other assets in the Amur Region. Further work is ongoing to develop a regional test plant for gravitational, flotation and cyanidation metallurgical work for the Pioneer, Malomir and Albyn assets.
Osipkan
The licence area lies just a few kilometres to the south of Tokur, in the north-east of the Amur Region, with very similar geology: a monotonous series of green schists of Paleozoic age. In 2008, the results of geochemical and geophysical surveys carried out in 2007 by the Company were confirmed by four trenches across the south central area where a tectonic zone has been discovered at the contact of Paleozoic green slates with sandstones and siltstones. The thickness of this zone is 300 to 350 metres, and lateral extent 2.7km. From assay data of channel samples in this zone, 20 ore intervals of thickness from 1 to 11.2 metres have been found. Gold grades vary from 0.9 to 8.82g/t. The length of the orebodies has not been determined. According to the characteristics found here, the Company's geologists expect the discovery of a major gold deposit. From geological indicators this zone is similar to the Glavniy fault zone of the Tokur deposit located 10 to 11km to the north.
Albyn
The Albyn deposit is located approximately 45km south east of Tokur and approximately 485km from Pokrovskiy, in the Selemdzhinskiy area of the Amur Region along the bank of the river Kharga. Since 1901, gold mineralisation has been known to exist in this area and it was worked until 1955 for gold and scheelite (tungsten). Mineralisation is in quartz veins similar to those at Tokur.
Ore at Albyn contains large particles of visible gold, making assay testing, and as a result exploration works, challenging. However, Albyn ores are very easily treatable. Metallurgical studies have shown the following: by gravity separation it is possible to recover between 79.3 per cent. and 95.2 per cent., by sorption cyanidation between 92.0 per cent. and 97.3 per cent. and by heap-leaching between 50.3 per cent. and 89.1 per cent. This has led the Company to plan to construct a 1.5 mtpa resin in pulp (RIP) plant for gravity separation at Albyn. It is intended to commission this plant in 2011/2012 with initial output of 50,000 oz ramping up to 100,000 oz in the following year.
Iron Ore Operations
The Company has a number of iron ore mining projects as well as related infrastructure opportunities. Crucial construction and operational experience has been obtained at the Kuranakh mine which generated its first revenues in June 2008. The key K&S and Garinskoye projects have taken further developmental steps with the completion of the combined feasibility study in late 2008. There remains the opportunity to move further up the value chain through Petropavlovsk's titanium sponge joint venture and the potential to upgrade K&S's processed iron ore to pig iron.
Geographical Spread
The Group’s principal assets are located in the Amur Region, Russian Far East and it has offices in London, Moscow and Blagoveschensk (Amur Region) with the head office in London. In addition the Group is active (itself or through joint ventures) in other areas of Russia including the Evreyskaya Avtonomnaya Oblast (EAO) and the Yamal, Buryatia, Magadan, Chita, Irkutsk and Sakha regions. The Group’s gold operations are focussed on its Pokrovskiy and Pioneer producing mines, Malomir (a development project), and its exploration projects at the Pokrovskiy Satellite Deposits area and the Albyn, Tokur and Osipkan deposits, all of which are in the Amur Region, and the Novogodnee Monto nd Petropavlovskoye deposits in the Yamal Region. Its primary iron ore assets are Kuranakh and Garinskoye in the Amur Region and the Kimkanskoye and Sutarskoye iron ore deposits (K&S) in the EAO.
Board of Directors and Key Management
| Peter Hambro | Chairman |
| Dr. Pavel Maslovskiy | Chief Executive |
| Brian Egan | Chief Financial Officer |
| Sir Rudolph Agnew | Senior Non-Executive Director |
| Sir Malcolm Field | Non-Executive Director |
| Sir Roderic Lyne | Non-Executive Director |
| Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank | Non-Executive Director |
| Peter Hill-Wood | Non-Executive Director |
Company Address11, Grosvenor Place
|
Additional Address/Key ContactInvestor Relations contact - |
CapitalCurrent Issued Share Capital: 171,083,485 Ordinary shares of £0.01 each |
Annual General Meeting25 June | Year End31 December |
Nominated BrokersJPMorgan Cazenove Limited | Nominated AdvisorsJPMorgan Cazenove Limited |
Major Shareholders
| Shareholder | Number of shares | % of issued share capital |
| Pavel Maslovskiy & Associates | 20,446,978 | 11.95% |
| Lansdowne Partners Ltd | 15,086,666 | 8.82% |
| BlackRock Inc | 13,475,261 | 7.88% |
| Peter Hambro & Associates | 10,820,621 | 6.32% |
| JPMorgan Asset Management | 8,259,509 | 4.83% |
| Baring Asset Management Limited | 8,177,003 | 4.78% |
| M&G Investment Managers | 7,850,000 | 4.59% |
| Vanguard Precious Metals and Mining Fund | 7,850,000 | 4.95% |
| Standard Life Investments Limited | 6,627,647 | 3.87% |
| Malavasia Enterprises Inc. | 6,436,335 | 3.76% |
| Capital Research Management Company | 6,047,130 | 3.53% |
| Legal & General Plc | 5,917,178 | 3.46% |
Related News
27/01/10 - Petropavlovsk Anticipates A Significant Boost To Gold Production This Year14/10/09 - Chinese Infrastructure Giant XY-Group Will Commit Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars To Develop Petropavlovsk's Iron Ore Assets
02/09/09 - As Production Nears 500,000 Ounces Per Year, Peter Hambro Proposes A Name Change To Emphasise Its Russian Roots
27/04/09 - The Newly Completed Merger Between Peter Hambro Mining And Aricom Makes Sense In Both Russia and China
27/01/09 - Peter Hambro Mining Heads Towards Production Of 500,000 Ounces Of Gold This Year, And At A Tidy Margin Too
26/11/08 - Peter Hambro’s Counter-Offensive Sends HSBC Packing, But Not Before Some Serious Collateral Damage Was Inflicted
Most Recent Statement
15/12/09 - Second Price Monitoring Extn13/10/09 - Petropavlovsk aggreement with Xuan Yuan Industrial Development Co. Ltd. to develop the K&S iron ore project
24/09/09 - Change of Name
28/08/09 - Half Yearly Report
04/06/09 - Director's Dealings
02/06/09 - Directorate Change