Johannesburg — COPPER miner Metorex is now "well positioned to pursue its growth strategy" after reducing net debt 77% since last June, CEO Terence Goodlace said yesterday.

Metorex looked threatened with closure in the past financial year, after shareholders blocked efforts to issue new shares to help service debt of more than R2bn. The figure has now been reduced to R1,1bn after Metorex sold nearly all of its SA operations, and raised 120m through a "claw back" share offer this month.

That helped the 46% fall in net debt since the close of the last financial year, announced in an operational update published yesterday. Part of the funds received from the claw back offer had been used to reduce debt further.

It said 35m was paid to Standard Bank to ensure more favourable terms on a debt package at the Ruashi mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and a further R30m was used to repay an overdraft at Investec.

Since the sale of South African assets, including the Barberton gold mines and Phoenix platinum operations, Metorex has focused exclusively on copper and cobalt operations in Zambia and the Congo.

Ruashi, the biggest of those mines, saw its copper production fall in the three months to last month by 950 tons, or 6%, from the previous quarter. That was the result of electrical problems which hampered production for 10 days in January. Production rates had recovered strongly since then, and Ruashi produced 2857 tons of copper last month - 41% of its total production for the quarter.

Despite the problems at Ruashi group, copper production climbed 2% from the previous quarter to 12880 tons, helped by strong performances at Zambia's Chibuluma and Sable mines. Both saw production rises of 14% from the previous quarter, thanks to higher grades at Chibuluma, and a higher flow of third party ores at Sable.

Copper production was predicted to grow to 14000 tons in the quarter to June. Lower cobalt production at Ruashi saw a total quarterly decline of 2% to 810 tons, despite a strong performance by the much smaller operation at Sable, the company said.