Great Western Mining Corporation AIM:GWMO, the AIM-listed mining and metal refinery company operating in Nevada recently published its results.
As previously reported the company is hoping to be fast into revenue, through its joint venture refinery agreement with a local partner, Tipton Trucking to form Western Milling LLC, which will process gold, silver and copper deposits from its own sites; and targeting easy-to-reach minerals in the spoils and waste from historic mining on its tenements.
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Despite this, Great Western was still loss-making, reporting a loss for the year ending 31st December 2022 of EUR792,263, up from a loss of EUR535,960 for the year previous. This translated into a basic and diluted loss per share of 0.0002 cents, down from 0.001 cents in 2021.
The miner’s cash pile was eroded, being EUR0.15m at the calendar year’s end against EUR2m in 2021. Net assets at the end of 2022 were EUR8.6m.
Operational progress
Great Western did make some encouraging steps forward in 2022. Apart from the JV refinery which the company started building with Tipton Trucking, the mining company also started laying down site infrastructure, constructing a 14km road that would allow trucks and heavy vehicles to access its higher-altitude Mineral Jackpot site. Previously access had been via a mule track.
A drill programme was completed on several of its properties, extending the OMCO mine gold vein and confirming shallow metal deposits at Mineral Jackpot.
Management completed a GBP800,000 placement of 1 billion new shares at 0.08p each during the year and said it will use the proceeds to accelerate the construction of the Western Milling refinery, to bolster its exploration budget and expediate the appraisal of its gold and silver prospects. Three of the company’s directors participated in the placement.
Intense activity
The company also advanced the modelling of a copper prospect at its M2 tenement. Chairman Brian Hall said: “[Last year] was a period of intense activity for the company, during which we not only accelerated a fruitful exploration programme including drilling on three of our prospects but also created a processing joint venture from scratch for production of precious metals. The mill is now under construction and due to be processing material from Mineral Jackpot and the OMCO Mine this year. We have an exciting inventory of prospects for copper, gold and silver that continue to provide increasing levels of upside, while first revenues from production will significantly change our profile and further prove our value proposition.”The company published a mineral resource update in November 2022, reporting an inferred resource estimate of 31,000 tonnes (T), which had a grading of 1.6g/T of gold and in the tailings at the Olympic Mine 3g/T. The exploration project at Olympic Mine tailing has a target of 3,400T to 6,400T with a grading of 0.5g/T to 1.2g/T gold in the substrate below the tailings, a target of 9,000T to 12,000T with a grading of 0.9g/T to 2.4g/T and 2g/T and 5.1g/T of gold in the coarse stockpiles at Olympic Mine.
The company said that at the Mineral Jackpot project, it had an exploration target of 4,200T to 7,700T with a grading of 40g/T and 140g/T and 0.3g/T of gold in the spoil heaps adjacent to the mineworks.
Great Western has been on AIM since August 2011 and opened trading today (22nd May) at 0.098p, has offered a year-to-date return of -24%, a one-year return of -27.6% and its shares have ranged between 0.08p and 0.85p over a 52-week period giving the company a market capitalisation of GBP4.4m.
