Shares in mining group Noventa Ltd (LON:NVTA) rose by 5.7% to 6.88p this morning on news that the company was set to complete the earlier than expected shipment to Asia of tantalum concentrate to one of its two major customers. Approximately 8,000kg of tantalum concentrate have been loaded on a ship, with a scheduled departure date of August 24, 2010 from Quelimane, the nearest Mozambique port to Noventa’s Marropino mine. A further shipment to the company's other major customer is scheduled for October.

The shipments have been organised to confirm the logistics pathway for future shipments of tantalum concentrate to Noventa’s customers, and to revise and adjust shipping routes and procedures in advance of the proposed full production at the Marropino Mine in 2011. The early shipment was possible due to higher levels of production at the Marropino Mine than previously forecast.

In today’s update, the company said it had always intended to ship from a Mozambique port rather than overland to Walvis Bay in Namibia, as was the previous practice, which was a journey of between 7 and 10 days. The newly refurbished and modernised container port of Quelimane in Zambezia Province was selected as the sea point of departure, a road journey of 350km from Marropino. The port at Nacala in Mozambique's Nampula Province remains an alternate departure point depending upon shipping timetables.

Eric Kohn TD, Noventa's executive chairman, said: “I am delighted that we have been able to begin to supply our two key customers and I am also especially pleased that we have been able to meet our stated objective to use a Mozambique port. This not only shortens significantly our logistic tail, but also provides welcome support to Mozambique's growing infrastructure.”

Operations at Marropino were placed on care and maintenance at the end of May 2009, shortly before a new management team took over the business and set out plans to restore the flagship mine to profitable production. In June this year, it published a three year strategic plan requiring $23m of new capital to upgrade the plant capacity at Marropino by around 70% to over 500,000lbs of tantalum pentoxide per year during 2010/11.

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