Anglo Asian's Azerbaijan gold production up by 52 pct in Q1 y/y

BAKU, April 14 (Reuters) - Azerbaijan' top gold producer, Anglo Asian Mining Plc (LSE: AAZ.L - news) , increased its output by 52 percent to 17,193 ounces in the first quarter of 2015 and set a target of 70,000 to 75,000 ounces for the whole year.

The company increased its gold output by 16 percent to 60,285 ounces in 2014, hitting its target for the year.

The London-listed firm said it increased production of copper at Azerbaijan's main mine, Gedabek, and the Gosha mine to 182 tonnes in the January to March period this year from 141 tonnes in the same period last year. Silver (Shenzhen: 300221.SZ - news) output fell to 1,950 ounces from 3,890 ounces.

"This is a highly credible performance for the quarter and shows that the various initiatives taken during 2014 to improve production performance are now starting to show positive results," Anglo Asian CEO Reza Vaziri said in a statement.

"Our production target for 2015 of between 70,000 and 75,000 ounces of gold represents a significant increase of around 16 to 24 percent compared to the 2014 production of 60,285 ounces."

He said the company was making good progress on the building of a small scale flotation plant and the necessary modifications to enable it to process the tailings of the agitated leach plant.

The plant is expected to be commissioned in the third quarter of this year.

Gold sales in the first quarter of this year totalled 17,206 ounces at an average price of $1,214 per ounce.

Gold is produced at Gedabek and other Azeri mines under a production venture with Anglo Asian, in which the government owns 49 percent.

Anglo Asian began production at Gedabek, 350 km west of the capital Baku, in July 2009 and plans to extract a total of 22 tonnes of gold from the mine.

Overall, Anglo Asian plans to develop seven mines in western Azerbaijan with estimated gold reserves of 430 tonnes. (Reporting by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Louise Heavens)