Navan Resources has completed a $34 million (€31.5 million) deal to finance development of its new zinc mine in southern Spain. The funding, through Deutsche Bank, will allow Navan to bring its Aguas Tenidas Este mine, which is already in production, up to its planned output of 600,000 tonnes of ore a year by 2001, the company said.

"This will expand the overall treatment rate, to one million tonnes a year. Projected metal output from Spain will then be of the order of 55,000 tonnes of zinc, 8,000 tonnes of lead, 8,000 tonnes of copper, 1,200,000 ounces of silver, and 10,000 ounces of gold, a year", Navan said in a statement.

Mr Brian Calver, chief executive, said the fundamentals for zinc looked good, and that Aguas Tenidas was expected to have an operating cost net of by-product revenues of well below 30 US cents per pound of zinc which he said was "very competitive" in world terms. Navan also said it had completed the previously announced sale of all of its Hungarian operations, enabling it to pay off a $7 million loan from NM Rothschild & Sons.