PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Mineral sands miner MDL and partner Eramet have committed a further $25-million in the form of an additional subordinated loan to their jointly-owned subsidiary TiZir.

MDL said in a statement on Wednesday that production issues experienced at the Grande Côte project, in Senegal, during July, had contributed to the funding requirement, with the situation exacerbated by continued pressure on revenue as commodity prices remained soft.

The Grande Côte mine had experienced unplanned downtime in July, following a series of unrelated events, including disappointing heavy mineral concentrate (HMC) production.

In addition to the impact on cash flow, the production performance at Grande Côte also served to limit the borrowing base available to TiZir, along with its working capital facilities during September and October.

MDL said that, to optimise the availability of finance under these facilities, a rebalancing of the intercompany cash arrangements between Grande Côte and TiZir would be required.

Meanwhile, production at Grande Côte was ramping up after the July downtime and the operation produced over 80 000 t of HMC during August and was on track to produce some 170 000 t of product for the quarter ending September.

MDL said the strong recent performance was in part due to the auctioning of a number of discrete commissioning projects foreshadowed in the company’s second quarter operational review.

A key objective of these projects was to get the mining operation consistently producing at and above the levels achieved during August. The projects also extended to the mineral separation plant, where a number of initiatives have been designed to improve efficiencies as increased use of the plant resulted from improvements in the mining operation.

MDL has seconded its newly appointed COO Jozsef Patarica to the operations.

Prior to joining MDL, Patarica, who has some 24 years experience in the mining industry, spent eight years as director of Bassari Resources.