Trigon Metals Inc. mined 97,525 tonnes of ore for the fiscal year ending 31 March 2024, exceeding its planned target for its Kombat Mine.
This includes 85,365 tonnes from the open pit at a 0.98% copper grade and 12,160 tonnes from the underground at a 2.36% copper grade, culminating in an overall grade of 1.15%.
“We are proud to have exceeded our planned target of 90,000 tonnes. Fiscal 2024 was a momentous year for the Company, starting open pit mining, commissioning the mill and starting the underground mining operations at the tail end of the year,” said Trigon CEO & Executive Chairman Jed Richardson.
He added that in a few weeks, Trigon will be reporting Q1 2025, completed June 30, 2024.
“We anticipate continuing our progress in demonstrating the profitability of the Kombat Mine and building Trigon Metals into a mid-tier copper mining company,” he said.
Meanwhile, for the same period, Trigon reported a profit from continuing operations of US$13.4 million (N$238 million) and a net loss of US$1.5 million for the twelve months ending March 31, 2024.
“Results were heavily skewed by the positive revaluation of the liability associated with the Sprott Streaming agreement, to align with the Company’s NI 43-101 SRK Feasibility Study. However, improvements at the operational level where the beginnings of the impact of underground production had a dramatic impact on operating costs,” said Richardson.
The company reported C1 cash costs of $3.35/lb on 1,255,652 lbs of copper production in the quarter, a marked improvement over $3.96/lb reported in Q3 2024.
“The operating results were positively impacted by weakness in the Namibian dollar compared to the US dollar, the Company’s reporting currency, and higher ore tonnage with the contribution of the pre-commercial underground ore tonnes,” said Richardson.
C1 costs are a standard metric used in copper mining as a reference point to denote the basic cash costs of running a mining operation to allow comparison across the industry.