Producing mineral company Strategic Minerals updated the market on its magnetite ore sales at its Cobre magnetite operations in New Mexico on Thursday, for the three months to March.
The AIM-traded firm said strong sales volumes continued at Cobre with March quarter sales of $1.424m for 21,635 tonnes.

Given the seasonality associated with January and February traditionally being low sales months, the board called it a "pleasing result" and in line with management expectations.

The sales represented an increase of more than 60% on last year's March quarter sales of $0.884m for 14,264 tonnes.

Strategic said the sharp increase in sales and cash flow from Cobre could be seen in the year-on-year comparisons.

Despite the March quarter sales being lower than those for the December quarter, the year-on-year performance of sales of $6.228m on 92,351 tonnes represented a 288% increase in revenue for the same period in 2017.

On the financial front, Strategic said that despite having settled the cash component of the Leigh Creek Copper Mine acquisition of $1.079m, it had still maintained a strong cash balance, which as at 31 March was $3.110m, down from $3.806m at the end of December.

The board said that "healthy" cash position placed it in a strong position to internally fund the restart of Leigh Creek, the imminent CARE 2018 drilling programme and its expected share of 2018 Redmoor exploration expenses.

"Sales remain strong at Cobre and Management continues to focus on this operation whilst looking to reinvest the proceeds into projects that will provide the company further cash flow, most notably, the recent Leigh Creek Copper Mine acquisition," said managing director John Peters.

"The board and management is establishing its growth strategy within the context of the expected performance at Cobre and has an exciting, and potentially lucrative, development programme planned which should see the company in a strengthened position in 2019."

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