Thompson Creek Records Q1 Moly Sales of 4.3 Million Pounds

Thompson Creek Metals Company Inc. (TSX:TCM,NYSE:TC) announced its production and sales results for 2015′s first quarter, noting that its Mount Milligan mine produced 15.4 million pounds of payable copper and 46,100 ounces of gold. Respectively, those are increases of 8 and 18 percent from the year-ago period.

Moly sales from inventory at the company’s Thompson Creek mine, inventory at its 75-percent-owned Endako mine and from third-party sources came to 4.3 million pounds.

As quoted in the press release:

Since the beginning of 2015, throughput and production at Mount Milligan Mine have been impacted by frozen and plugged feeders and unscheduled mechanical issues in other areas of the grinding and flotation circuits. Action plans to address these issues are being implemented. Average mill throughput for the first quarter of 2015 was 39,569 tonnes per day (‘tpd’) compared to 33,278 tpd for the first quarter of 2014. Throughput improved during the last half of March, achieving 50,000 to 54,000 tpd for a majority of the days during that period.

Jacques Perron, president and CEO of Thompson Creek, commented:

Production at Mount Milligan during the first quarter of this year was challenging due to a number of operational and mechanical issues in the mill, but we have gained valuable knowledge and are making operational improvements to increase throughput going forward. As a result of the issues we experienced in the mill, we minimized our use of the temporary secondary crushing circuit during the first quarter of 2015. With the recent improvements in the mill, we expect to increase secondary crushing for the remainder of 2015, which we believe will allow us to achieve throughput of approximately 60,000 tpd by year-end.

Click here to read the full Thompson Creek Metals Company Inc. (TSX:TCM,NYSE:TC) press release.