Amsterdam, Netherlands, April 23, 2014 - Nord Gold N.V. (“Nordgold” or the “Company”, LSE: NORD), the internationally diversified, pure-play gold producer strategically focused on emerging markets, announces its operating results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2014.
This has been a very strong start to the year, building on the progress seen in the second half of 2013. I am delighted to see an improved production performance across nearly the entire asset portfolio, testament to the considerable efforts of our team in driving the efficiencies and improvements necessary. In particular we have seen continued strong performance at Bissa, record recovery at Taparko and further grade improvement at Buryatzoloto following investments in exploration. These improvements give me confidence that Nordgold is well positioned to deliver in a lower price environment and on track to meet our 2014 full year production target.
We have also made good progress on our projects. At Gross we have begun a pilot stage operation which we expect will give us more detailed information about the metallurgy of the future mine and around 30 koz of gold in 2014. The exploration phase at Montagne d’Or deposit in French Guiana continues and has so far shown encouraging results, while we have also begun preparation of an in-house scoping study for the Bouly project in Burkina Faso, located close to our Bissa mine.
The focus of management remains unchanged: to maintain our cost discipline across the Company, carefully manage capex spend and further improve efficiency and safety at all mines. Our goal remains to achieve positive free cash flow generation at all our mines. Nikolai ZelenskiChief Executive Officer of Nordgold