Sometimes, unexpected or unpredictable events might ruin your efforts and destroy what has been so tough for you to achieve. These are the so called “force majeure” circumstances.
These are classified as unforeseen events, beyond the control of the company and which prevent it from performing its obligations. Typically, force majeure circumstances cover natural disasters and other incidents.
Century Mining Corp. (CVE:CMM), (PINK:CMNZF) is currently experiencing hard times, just like its stock on the market. However, there is nothing to blame the company for. It has become a victim of something similar to a force majeure event.
Yesterday, Century informed that the mill facility at its Lamaque gold mine experienced an unexpected cone crusher failure on Feb. 9. This decreased the average production rate of the mine in February. It is currently still below plan.
Fortunately, the company managed to fully repair the damage three days ago. However, as stated in the announcement, “the losses in mill throughput resulting from the crusher failure has had an adverse impact upon the Company’s cash flow and its available funds”.
Of course, the news had an adverse effect on the share performance too. Yesterday, on the TSX Venture Exchange (CVE), CMM fell more than 17% down on a huge turnover of 8.3M. This was a two year trading volume record.
In addition to the negative sentiment, we should mention some discouraging financial figures. According to the latest filed financial reports, the net loss for the third quarter of 2010 is $3.92M compared to a net income of $2.69M for the relevant quarter in 2009.
Now it is time for the positive part of the story. Century Mining is one of the few Canadian mining companies that has already reached the production phase and has started to earn revenues. In this respect, it is well ahead of many other players in the mining sector.
As stated in the company’s February presentation, Century is planning to produce up to 100 000 ounces of gold in 2011. We can only wait to see if this will come true indeed.
