Shares of Scotgold Resources Limited, the Australia-based gold exploration firm focused on Scotland, rose 5% on Monday after it published an update on mine production and processing performance at its Cononish Gold and Silver Project that included a second gold concentrate shipment.

“Mining activity continued uninterrupted throughout July in the high grade area of the mine as planned,” said Scotgold.

“Scotgold’s dual focus is to further enhance safe production through consistency and stability of mine and process plant operations in parallel with the opening of multiple faces of ore in the underground mine itself.

“Mining activities further increased the volume and, importantly, the quality of ore stored on the stockpile.

“The ore thickness is wider than anticipated producing more high grade ore from this cut and fill section …

“As part of the risk analysis approach implemented by the company, the process plant was taken offline several times throughout July to conduct further proactive inspections of risk areas to prevent future failures.

“This work proved useful in identifying a number of preventative measures which has resulted in the process plant having been in 24 hour operations since this work was completed.

“This step change has seen the process plant average over 90% of design throughput for the last 10 days of the month …

“As planned, the process plant produced sufficient concentrate throughout the month to allow another shipment of 25 tonnes of concentrate, further strengthening our goal to achieve steady ramp up in production …

“The company expects to continue informing the market through regular monthly updates, where a focus on more forward looking statements is expected including the ramp-up of production and new estimates for calendar year 2021 gold production.”