Vatukoula Gold Mines announced this morning their operational update the period covering December to the end of February.The report related to the company's wholly owned Vatukoula Gold Mine in Fiji, which produces gold containing 830,000 ounces of gold reserves and 5.15 million ounces of gold resources.
The board announced today that the Vatukoula mine had made a net earning of GBP4.6 million, 1.3million more than the previous quarter. Gold recovery and sales were also up on the previous year, totalling 12,869 ozs and 15,267 ozs respectively. The cash costs were US$684, compared to US$584, reportedly due to lower grade material being mined over the quarter.
The company also announced it had completed the first payment of US$770,000 to the Social AssistanceTrust Fund in March 2010. This fund will finance the retraining and relocation of previous employees of Vatukoula who have not regained employment, the report said. David Paxton, CEO, said:
We continue to focus on ramping up production and are now clearly seeing the benefits of our investment in new equipment last year. We have a long-term plan in place for the mine and it is pleasing to see its continued development going to plan. We continue to believe that our forecast production target of 60,000 ounces gold production for the financial year ending August 2010 remains on course.
