News

May 14, 2009

With Production Now Stabilising At Roughly 100,000 Ounces Per Year, Cluff Gold Begins To Think Of Stepping It Up A Gear

By Alastair Ford

Investors in Cluff Gold were put through the mill at the end of last year, no doubt about it. When the market was at its worst, buyers almost completely disappeared, and the shares sank to a low of 8p. That was shortly after it transpired that the possibility of a working capital shortfall caused by start up delays was serious enough to force the company into arranging a US$10 million debt facility on what can only be described as punishing terms. And, by an almost surreal turn of events, the share price low coincided almost exactly with the official opening of the company’s Kalsaka gold mine in Burkina Faso.

The net effect of all that was that the usual re-rating that the market awards development companies that press the production switch was nowhere to be seen. At least not for a few shaky weeks, it wasn’t. But when interest returned towards the end of November, the market was suddenly forced to wake up to the fact that Cluff Gold was now officially a producer of some substance, and to recognise the merits in a company that was ramping rapidly up towards annualised production of 100,000 ounces...