Taseko announced third quarter 2015 production of 41 million pounds of copper, 16% higher than the 35.4 million pounds achieved in the third quarter 2014. Total sales for the third quarter were 41 million pounds of copper.
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Russell Hallbauer, President and CEO of Taseko, commented, "During the quarter, planned maintenance was performed on both SAG mills, as well as other key circuits in the mill, resulting in daily mill throughput of 82,000 tons.
"This was 3.6% below design capacity and below the 88,000 tons per day achieved in the previous quarter. With the maintenance work now behind us, we expect to be back to the higher throughput levels in the fourth quarter."
"In the second quarter, Gibraltar's costs steadily declined with June's Total Operating Costs at $1.80 per pound. Third quarter average costs are expected to be at a similar level to June, even though mill throughput in the quarter was slightly below capacity. Lower costs are a result of operational efficiency improvements as well as cost containment initiatives, in both the mine and mill."
"Our engineering team is finalizing Gibraltar's 2016 operating plan and have already identified a number of areas for cost savings, in addition to those already being realized. It is important to understand that we are maintaining a very adaptable mine plan in the event copper prices unexpectedly decline.
"There are a number of actions we can take to deal with lower copper pricing, as we did in 2008 when we lowered Total Operating Costs from $2.02 per pound in August 2008 to $1.13 per pound by February 2009.
"Our hedging strategy is providing stability to cash flow during this period of volatile copper pricing. In the third quarter, the copper put options provided proceeds of C$2.3 million.
For the fourth quarter, we have put options in place at $2.40 per pound, which at today's exchange rate is equivalent to C$3.20 per pound, for five million pounds per month. More recently we purchased copper put options for the first quarter 2016 with a strike price of $2.05 per pound. We will continue to look for opportunities to improve our price protection in 2016."
Gibraltar is a Joint Venture owned by Taseko Mines Limited (75%) and Cariboo Copper Corp. (25%). ■