Centamin plc Q1 preliminary production results

Thursday, Apr 12, 2012

Centamin plc ("Centamin" or "the Company") (TSX:CEE)(LSE:CEY) is pleased to announce its preliminary production results from its Sukari Gold Mine ("Sukari") in Egypt for the quarter ended 31 March 2012.

Total gold production for the quarter was 49,071 ounces, a 9% increase on the corresponding quarter in 2011. Despite the strike activity that occurred during the quarter, gold production was only marginally below budget; a credit to the operating team at Sukari.

Whilst disruptions to operations during the quarter resulted in lower overall tonnes mined from the open pit and lower overall tonnes treated by the process plant than in Q4, the resultant gold production was underpinned by the plant achieving record productivity, with tonnes per hour rates exceeding 5Mtpa consistently during the quarter. Quarterly throughput in the Sukari process plant was 1,020kt, 38% higher than the corresponding quarter in 2011 and just 4% lower than Q4 2011, which was a record quarter.

The underground mine achieved record quarterly material movement and underground ore production increased to 71,815t, a 3% increase on Q4 2011.

Josef El-Raghy, Chairman of Centamin, commented:

"Centamin stated in its conference call on the day of the Q4 results that Sukari's production profile for the year would see a larger proportion of ounces delivered in Q3 and Q4 due to the increasing headgrade in the open pit, with 50,000 ounces of production anticipated in Q1. Despite a challenging quarter, the team at Sukari delivered a solid quarter of gold production and the 250,000oz guidance for 2012 remains intact."

Source: Marketwire