Greatland Gold PLC on Friday hailed a ‘landmark year’, but reported a widened loss, as costs mounted, and the firm took a hit from foreign exchange rates.

Greatland Gold is a London-headquartered mining development and exploration company, focused primarily on precious and base metal mining in Western Australia and Tasmania.

In the financial year to June 30, pretax loss widened substantially to £11.4 million from £5.5 million.

Greatland has no revenue. The loss consisted of administrative and other expenses of £5.3 million, compared to just £1.8 million a year prior. Exploration and evaluation costs of £3.0 million remained steady compared to £3.3 million. It also recognised a £2.7 million hit from foreign exchange, compared to £193,976 in financial 2021.

Shares in Greatland fell 5.6% to 8.17 pence each in London on Friday morning.

The company said the pace of development at its flagship project, the Havieron gold-copper deposit in Paterson province, Western Australia, is ’extraordinary’. Having completed 250,000 metres of drilling alongside Sydney-listed Newcrest Mining Ltd, it said the has increased the likelihood of upgrading and updating the resource and reserve.

In March, Greatland had announced an update to the mineral resource and reserve at the project. The resource increased 50% to 5.5 million ounces of gold and 218,000 tonnes of copper and the reserve to 2.4 million ounces of gold and 109,000 tonnes of copper.

Greatland also noted ‘great progress’ on its second joint venture with Newcrest - the Juri JV. The exploration programme in the first year has revealed ‘broad intersections and continuity of gold mineralisation’ at Black Hills, in the same area of Australia.

‘I am delighted with the progress of Greatland Gold...in what has been a landmark year for the company. We achieved several key milestones at our flagship asset Havieron, including delivery of a pre-feasibility study followed by our own independent mineral resource update that substantially increased the Havieron resource. The decline construction and other surface infrastructure activities continued at pace and we have taken major steps towards bringing a tier-one gold-copper project into production,’ commented Chair Alex Borrelli.

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.