Almonty Industries Inc. announces that it has received the final surface permit in respect of its Sangdong Mine that now enables it to begin construction of the processing plant and the road and river diversion. The project is now fully permitted and the EPC contract expected to be signed within the next 4 weeks.
Almonty also announces that it has exercised its option on the Valtreixal Project in Spain and now owns 100% of the project. Almonty acquired the remaining 49% through a series of payments to Siemcalsa that totalled Euro 1.5 million, having negotiated a Euro 750,000 reduction on the final price. Almonty now owns 100% of the Valtreixal Project and continues to work on project development with a view to being in a position to bring the project on-line when market conditions warrant.
Almonty’s Chairman, President and CEO Lewis Black said:
“Obtaining the final permits ahead of schedule will enable Almonty to begin construction of the Sangdong mine as soon as funding has been finalized. We continue to work with our banks and an industry participant on the final funding package for the build-out of Sangdong and will update the market once the agreements have been finalized. We are still anticipating a commission date of Q1 2018.
Acquiring control of 100% of the Valtreixal Project further cements Almonty’s position as the leading producer of tungsten concentrate outside of China. We anticipate that the Valtreixal Project will have a lower cost of production than that of our Los Santos Mine which already operates at a lower cost than any non-by-product western tungsten mine, enabling Almonty to benefit further from a recovering market demand for tungsten concentrate. We are currently in the permitting stage and anticipate receiving all necessary approvals in calendar 2017.
We also continue to discuss with our customers an expansion of our current fixed priced contracts for 2017, as we believe current industry contract concentrate pricing as priced off spot APT, to be completely artificial given the appreciation we have seen in other industrial metals along with that of tungsten scrap, used alongside concentrate, which is pricing some 30% above concentrate pricing and is valued at the same price as APT, the downstream product.”
source: yahoo.com