JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Despite marginally missing its planned metal production target for the 2015 fiscal year ended July 31, TSX-V- and Aim-listed Rambler Metals & Mining, operating in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, managed to meet or exceed all other remaining guidance targets.

This was according to president and CEO Norman Williams, who said: “It has certainly been a challenging year with a declining copper price, but the quick actions taken by Rambler to streamline costs and efficiencies throughout the business has have a beneficial impact.

“We began the 2015 fiscal year knowing that it would be a transitional step forward for the business as we worked towards finalising the Lower Footwall zone prefeasibility study [at Rambler's 100%-owned Ming copper-gold mine].”

With this work now completed, the copper and gold producer was “extremely pleased” with the staged, low-capital expansion strategy to improve the efficiency of the operation.

Williams noted that Ming, with over 20 years of mine reserves available, had the potential to be a long-term stable producer of premium high-grade copper concentrates.

YEAR-END, FOURTH QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS
With its revised mine plan implemented at Ming in January, Rambler had been targeting the lower end of the communicated production guidance.

Mill recoveries of copper, gold and silver showed increases over guidance of 3%, 7% and 23% respectively. Grades of 2.53% copper and 1.18 g/t of gold were at the lower end of Rambler’s plan, while silver grades of 8.68g/t exceeded the planned 8 g/t. Total mill throughput for the year was 215 535 dry metric tonnes.

Average recoveries for the year to concentrate were 96.9% copper, 69.8% gold and 73.7% silver, with a concentrate grade of 27.31%, 9.87 g/t and 73.18 g/t for copper, gold and silver respectively.

During the 2015 fourth quarter ended July 31, Rambler produced 3 600 t of copper concentrate, representing a 10% decrease over the previous quarter.

Further, dry tonnes milled of 59 373 t, representing a 39% increase over the third quarter, were on par with the 2014 fourth quarter. This resulted in the production of 960 t of copper, 1 495 oz of gold and 10 742 oz of silver, growing the fiscal year’s production to 4 733 t of copper, 5 335 oz of gold and 39 706 oz of silver.

Head grades averaged 1.93% copper, 1.22 g/t of gold and 8.75 g/t of silver for the quarter, and 2.53% copper, 1.18 g/t of gold and 8.68 g/t of silver for the year.

Some of the high-grade ore tonnes originally planned for the quarter under review had been rescheduled for the 2016 financial year, as per the revised mine plan.

For August, the first quarter of 2016, tonnes processed through the copper concentrator averaged 725-million tonnes a day, with run-of-mine feed grade 2.55% copper and 1.39 g/ t of gold.

Further details would be announced on or before October 28 with the release of the complete audited year-end financial statements.