PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Gulf Manganese on Thursday saw a 20% increase in its share price after the acquisition of its first high-grade manganese mine in Timor, and securing direct shipping ore (DSO) for export from Indonesia.
The company has told shareholders that it had vended the Putra Indonesia Jaya (PIJ) high-grade manganese mine to its key Indonesian and Singaporean partners.
PIJ is expected to start ore supply to Gulf’s operations in Kupang from September, and output is expected to increase to around 2 000 t/m by the first quarter of 2020.
In addition, Gulf has also announced that first DSO exports from Sumbawa were expected at Kupang before the end of the quarter.
Gulf in May this year received approval from the Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (EDSM) to export 103 162 t/y of DSO.
Gulf on Thursday said that some 22 mines have responded to the grant of the DSO export permit, by starting the process to restart mining operations. The mines were forced to close under the Indonesian government’s 2013 policy that banned the export of untreated ore.
Of these 22 mines, 13 have already been approved by the EDSM, with a further nine still in the process.
Gulf was expecting monthly DSO shipments to start at a rate of 1 000 t a month and ramp-up to 10 000 t a month by the first quarter of 2020. The ramp-up in operations will be supported by the supply of additional ore from the PIJ mine, Gulf MD Hamish Bohannan said.
“Over recent months, our team has worked tirelessly to underpin our ore supply chain and we are delighted to see this work coming to fruition with the successful acquisition through our business partners of our first high-grade manganese mine in Timor.
“The bolstering of our supply chain has been a key focus as we push towards commercial start-up of our DSO processing operations, with first ore from Sumbawa expected to be transported to Kupang for processing later this month, and the first DSO shipment scheduled for this quarter.”