Monday, March 1, 2010.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Shannon de Ryhove.

Making headlines today:

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 ounces of gold had been sent to the Rand Refinery, with which Avocet's subsidiary and owner of the Inata mine 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-dollars at the beginning of March.

Australian base- and precious metals developer Hillgrove Resources aims to complete construction at its flagship Kanmantoo copper/gold project, in South Australia, early next year.

The mine will be a two-million ton a year open-cut operation producing about 17 000 tons a year of copper in concentrate and 8 000 ounces a year of gold.

Hillgrove will start wet and dry commissioning once construction is completed at the end of the first quarter of 2011.

The company reported that drill rigs would be on site within the next month to continue the orebody definition, resource definition and exploration activities.

Also making headlines:

Zimbabwe presses ahead with plans to transfer control of foreign firms to local ownership despite objections that the policy will hurt economic recovery.
Chile restarts its top copper mines which were hit by an earthquake.
Mauritania's output of iron-ore dropped 9% in 2009.
And, the South African government seeks urgent iron-ore clarity from Kumba Iron Ore, ArcelorMittal and Anglo American.

That's a round up of news making headlines today. For more on these and other stories please visit miningweekly.com.