Bullabulling Gold (LON:BGL, ASX:BAB) has withdrawn gold production forecasts it previously made for its flagship project, emphasising the property's economic viability had not been established.
The firm, which is battling a takeover bid from ASX-listed Norton Gold Fields, highlighted its previous announcement that it will need additional funding to get the project into production and as yet, there is no certainty of receiving that.
In the statement of May 14 this year where it repeated its rejection of th bid from Norton, it said Bullabulling was "progressing well" with the evaluation and development of the project, which hosts an independently assessed JORC mineral resource of 3.75 million ounces of gold and is expected to produce around 175,000 ounces per year.
Re-optimisation work had reduced costs from US$1,196 per ounce to US$843 per ounce and reduced all-in cash costs to US$930 an ounce , it had reported.
Today, Bullabulling said: "Investors are advised that, as there is no certainty that sufficient funding will be secured for the Bullabulling Gold project, the economic viability of the project has not been established notwithstanding the independently assessed mineral resources of 3.75 million ounces of gold and the results of the prefeasibility study and further optimisation work carried out."
Norton Gold, which is listed on the Australia exchange (ASX:NGF) and 82.43% owned by Chinese giant Zijin Mining, made a A7c per share cash offer for the company in April.
"As Bullabulling is concerned that investors may imply that economic viability has been established for the project, it retracts the gold production forecasts and cautions investors against using those statements as a basis for investment decisions about shares in the company."