JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim-listed Avocet Mining has exported the first gold shipment from its Inata mine, in Burkina Faso, to the Rand Refinery, in South Africa, for refining.

About 11 000 oz of gold had been sent to the Rand Refinery, with which Avocet’s subsidiary and owner of the Inata mine, Société des Mines de Bélahouro, had signed a refining contract earlier in February.

The London-listed gold-miner expected that it would receive proceeds from the sale of this shipment of about $12-million at the beginning of March.

“Since first gold was poured the plant has performed ahead of expectations, and gold production to date has been well above our ramp up schedule,” Avocet CEO Jonathan Henry commented in a statement on Friday.

The first gold at the mine was poured on December 20, last year. It is scheduled to ramp up to reach a steady-state production rate of more than 10 000 oz/m of gold by July this year.

Avocet had two other operating mines, namely the Penjom mine, in Malaysia, and the North Lanut mine, in Indonesia, as well as a number of exploration projects in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Burkina Faso and Guinea.

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