News

February 04, 2010

With Production Set To Rise To 210,000 Ounces This Year, Highland Gold Is A Company That Once Again Seems At Ease With Itself

By Alastair Ford

Highland Gold’s latest trading update, released to market first thing on Wednesday 3rd February, made for pleasant enough breakfast reading. Gold production for 2009 increased up by a modest 2.7 per cent over the previous year’s output to just over 163,000 ounces of gold, while cash costs remained steady at the US$514 rate reported for the first half of the year, down from US$574 in 2008. Highland’s not the lowest cost producer by any means, but with gold still jumping around at the US$1,100 mark, there’s plenty of headroom. Investors certainly seemed to like the news, and pushed the shares by just over 2.5 per cent to 92p. That’s slightly off the 52 week high of 103p reached in early January, but a long way ahead of the lowly 55p at which the shares were trading this time last year.

It’s been a long road for Highland, as over the years it’s struggled to come to terms with the failure of its US$500 million ambition to develop a 300,000 ounce a year mine at Mayskoye. But now, as memories of Mayskoye begin to recede into the mists of time, Highland is beginning to look like a company that’s at last at ease with itself. Its local bosses are now Russian, for one thing. Valery Oif is the chief executive, following the departure some time ago now of Henry Horne. But in London,...