News

March 17, 2010

The Balance Of Avocet Mining’s Business Is Gradually Tipping Westwards

By Alastair Ford

In a way, Avocet’s latest set of financial results, for the nine months to 31st December 2009, represent the final set of accounts to come out of the old Avocet, as it was before it took on a whole new venture in a whole new part of the world – the Inata gold mine in Burkina Faso. Thus, for long time Avocet watchers, there was a familiar feel to the production numbers. The 82,174 ounces that the company produced from its mines in Malaysia and Indonesia, Penjom and North Lanut, was broadly flat on the amount produced for the previous comparable period. Costs crept up, from US$600 per ounce a year ago, to US$650 per ounce, and that’s something Avocet chief Jonathan Henry says the company will look to rectify in the current period. But Avocet’s far eastern operations have never been particularly low-cost, and it wasn’t for a discussion of margin at Penjom that the analysts came flooding through the doors on 17th March to hear the story first hand from Jonathan.

The interest centres on Burkina Faso, or more precisely, the ability of the Inata Mine to make Avocet Aim’s top gold producer. In an update to market earlier this month, Avocet detailed progress with production at Inata. This looks set to deliver more than 100,000 ounces of additional production to Avocet this year, and output should rise even higher next year. With Centamin and Peter Hambro now safely settling into their new homes on the full board of the London stock exchange, such...