Philex April shipments up over 2-fold

MANILA, Philippines - Philex Mining Corp. said the value of metals shipped in April this year grew more than two-fold to P1.63 billion from only P644 million for a single shipment in the same month last year.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Philex president Jose Ernesto Villaluna Jr. said the firm’s second shipment last month amounted to 4,995 dry metric tons of concentrates, bringing to 10,019 DMT the total shipped in April 2010.

The shipment contained about 7,845 ounces of gold, 2.74 million pounds of copper and 8,448 ounces of silver. This brought the April total to 15,717 ounces of gold, 5.4 million pounds of copper and 16,750 ounces of silver.

In contrast, Philex shipped 4,487 DMT of concentrates in April 2009, containing 9,321 ounces of gold, 2.5 million pounds of copper, and 9,117 ounces of silver.

Villaluna said the value of the second shipment in April 2010 is based on provisional metal prices and consists of P397 million from gold, P427 million from copper and P6 million from silver.

The value of ore produced by Philex from its Padcal mine rose 13 percent to P2.5 billion in the first quarter of the year from P2.22 billion in the same period in 2009 due to higher output and improving metal prices.

The Padcal mine has produced 2.11 million DMT of ore, slightly higher than the 2.09 million DMT produced in the first quarter last year.

For the month of March 2010, Villaluna said the firm produced 8,730 ounces of gold, 2.94 million pounds of copper and 9,122 ounces of silver.

During the month, the Padcal mine delivered 776,583 DMT of ore resulting in 5,463 DMT of concentrates containing 49.13 grams of gold per DMT, 24.37 percent copper and 51.9 grams of silver per DMT.

The total estimated value of the month’s production is P924 million, 20 percent higher than the P772 million worth of ore produced in March 2009. The March output is broken down into P442 million for gold, 475 million for copper and P7 million for silver.

The value of production is based on provisional metal prices of $,112.50 per ounce of gold, $3.55 per pound of copper and $17.50 per ounce of silver at the exchange rate of P45.524 to the dollar.