PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Diversified miner Independence Group has reported record revenues and underlying earnings after tax, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) for the full year ended June.

Underlying Ebitda for the full year increased by 1%, to a record A$340.7-million, while net profits after tax were also up by 44% compared with the previous financial year, to A$76.1-million.

Total revenue for the full year was up by 2% on the 2018 figures, to A$792.9-million.

“The 2019 financial year was a record year for Independence with record revenue and other income totalling A$793-million, generating record underlying Ebitda of A$341-million,” said MD and CEO Peter Bradford.

“Nova safely delivered an outstanding second year of commercial production that exceeded 2019 production guidance, while Tropicana also delivered a strong performance, comfortably meeting production guidance.”

Bradford noted that Independence also delivered significant progress on optimisation and value enhancement projects, including its downstream processing study work to extract more value from the Nova nickel sulphide concentrate.

At the Tropicana gold project, the second ball mill was also successfully installed and commissioned during the financial year, while the Boston Shaker underground development started.

“Across both our greenfields and brownfields exploration programmes, we accelerated our efforts to find more nickel, copper and cobalt, all metals critical to the global shift to clean energy, which includes renewable energy, grid scale energy storage and electric vehicles,” said Bradford.

Independence also increased its exploration budget at Nova for 2020 to A$66-million.

“We are currently enjoying robust nickel and gold prices and this, together with our consistent reliable production of low cost, high grade products, puts Independence in a solid position for the year ahead.”

The Nova project is expected to produce some 28 500 t of nickel, 11 750 t of copper and 900 t of cobalt in the 2020 financial year, while Tropicana would produce about 475 000 oz of gold, on a 100% basis.