(Alliance News) - Jangada Mines PLC on Friday said its half-year loss widened, but its projects and investee firms are "making excellent progress" with production at Pitombeiras in Brazil on the horizon.

The London-based and Brazil-focused miner prioritises commodities needed in the renewable energy sector.

It made a USD651,000 pretax loss in the first half of 2023 following a USD417,000 loss the year before. Jangada has not yet generated any revenue.

Jangada said exploration at its Pitombeiras ferrovanadium project in northeastern Brazil is progressing well, and its path to development and production of titanium dioxide and vanadium pentoxide there "is becoming clearer". It is still considering options to "economically extract" both compounds.

In mid-April, Jangada said tests at Pitombeiras found "excellent" recovery and purity rates of up to 86.73% for titanium dioxide and 95.88% for vanadium pentoxide. It used technology provided by investee company Fodere Titanium Ltd, which is advancing development of a pilot plant in South Africa and in which Jangada holds a 7.7% stake.

On Friday, Jangada also said it was "very excited" about the prospects of the Orom-Cross project in Uganda, run by Blencowe Resources PLC in which it has a 10.5% stake. In early September the firm noted metallurgical test work results confirming that Orom-Cross can deliver a high-grade graphite concentrate.

Jangada now plans to upscale testing and further explore Pitombeiras's parameters with an additional economic study.

Executive Chair Brian McMaster commented that "we remain excited about Pitombeiras, which has excellent upside potential, as well as our investee companies, which are making excellent progress towards first production.

"Furthermore, we continue to evaluate multiple value accretive commodity projects and remain hopeful of completing a transaction soon."

Shares in Jangada were down 4.0% at 2.31 pence in London on Friday.

By Emma Curzon, Alliance News reporter

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