Europa Metals Ltd said on Wednesday it had reduced its interim loss and confirmed that its Spanish zinc project showed potential for a future development.

The Europe-focused lead-zinc and silver developer saw its pretax loss narrow to A$1.4 million, around R 15.2 million, for the six months to December from A$1.6 million in the prior year.

Exploration expenditure dropped by a quarter to A$711,643 from A$950,854.

Basic loss per share shrank to A$2.31 from A$3.67.

Europa Metals said it continued to advance its understanding of the Toral project, which is located in the Castilla y Leon region, Spain, as a potential future low capital expenditure, high margin, lead, zinc and silver mine within the European Union.

Toral has progressed from being a collection of historical data points to a project with the potential for a future development, it said.

An independent updated resource estimate yielded a 55% increase in the indicated resource to about 5.9 million tonnes of zinc.

Since completing the scoping study in December 2018, the company’s workstreams have focused on additional resource drilling, geotechnical drilling, metallurgical testwork and environmental baseline studies.

In late October, the group secured a £1.5 million equity financing through the placing of 19.5 million new shares to certain institutional and other investors. The net proceeds will be utilised to further progress and de-risk Toral. These funds will also be used for general working capital purposes.

‘To this end, the management team has reviewed over 10 projects, with two being discussed and evaluated at Board level, and we intend to continue such activity and to identify, investigate and assess additional opportunities of potential interest. Further updates will be provided as and when appropriate,’ Europa Metals said.

In Johannesburg, Europa Metals shares remained unchanged at R 0.90 on Wednesday morning, while they rose by 3.2% to 4.00 pence in London.

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