VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – TSX-V-listed manganese miner Meridian Mining has increased its credit facility from The Sentient Group by $500 000, to $7.5-million, in support of gold exploration initiatives at its flagship Espigão project, in Rondônia, Brazil.

The company, which recently relocated its headquarters from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to London, UK, advised that the proceeds from the loan would be used to evaluate Meridian's gold project in Espigão.

"The increase in the loan facility reflects the confidence in the exploration targets being defined in Rondônia. The proceeds will be used to fund our drilling and trenching programme and to extend soil geochemical coverage, which remains open. Rondônia represents an exciting frontier for early-stage exploration,” said president and CEO Anthony Julien in a press release.

Meridian first identified gold anomalies at its 100%-owned Espigão do Oeste project during stream geochemistry in 2016. Since then, the company has started bedrock evaluation with a trenching programme on June 14, and started drilling at the Coice de Cobra gold target on August 1.

The Sentient Group loan bears interest at a rate of 10% a year and matures on April 30, 2018.

Meanwhile, Meridian has successfully ramped up manganese production according to its forecasts for the year, besting the plan for the second quarter ended June. The company advised in July that the pilot plant was nearing completion, which will allow Meridian to further increase output to the planned 50 000 t in 2017.

Meridian achieved production of 10.78 t in the second quarter, compared with 5.24 t in the second quarter of 2016.

Sales in the second quarter were 5 901 t of manganese oxide mineral product, compared with 9 112 t in the year-earlier period, mainly owing to Meridian in the comparable 2016 period selling inventories built during 2015.

Meridian has confirmed orders for 2017 totalling 52 832 t, which will account for all planned output in 2017.