EMED Mining (LON:EMED, TSE:EMD) said its near-term priority is to restart production of its Rio Tinto copper mine in Spain as it reported results for the year to end-December 2010.
It has made good progress during the period on Rio Tinto and its other major project: the Biely Vrch gold project in Slovakia.
During the period, EMED cleared several important hurdles in the approval process to get Rio Tinto up and running again. Once it has received all necessary government permits for triggering the restart, a six month ramp-up to first production is planned. EMED's target is to start preparing the plant, other infrastructure and human resources in 2011 for production in 2012, the exact timing of which will depend on the rate of permitting.
The group raised a total of just over €34 million during 2010 in placings, with its IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange in December and parallel AIM fundraising making up for €24 of that total.
As at December 31, dual-listed EMED had cash of €21.5 million, compared with €3.6 million a year earlier, and listed shares that had a market value of €4.4 million.
During 2010, the group incurred exploration and care and maintenance expenditure of €5.2 million, against €5.0 million, and net operating expenditure of €3.4 million, up from €2.1 million the previous year.
The full-year loss rose slightly to €10.2 million from €9.6 million.