Cambridge Mineral Resources claims its Quintana gold project in Colombia could help it achieve 120,000 oz annual production.

Colin Andrews, managing director of AIM-quoted Cambridge since April and a respected mining figure with at least eight mine starts to his credit, has been helping revamp the company, which had spent fruitless years trying to develop the Lomero-Poyatos polymetallic deposit in Spain. Supported by chairman Michael Thomsen, Andrews has steered the company into a much larger Spanish copper, zinc, silver and lead project at Masa Valverde, acquired encouraging gold prospects in Bulgaria from another company headed by Cambridge's ex-boss David Bramhill, and taken 50 per cent of Marcelita, a high-grade gold producing mine in Peru.

But the real 'blue sky', according to Thomsen, is Colombia, whose government is anxious to encourage resource investment to put its recent drug wars behind it, as far as possible. Cambridge has spent nearly £240,000 to buy 78 per cent of the Quintana project and must spend another £1.75 million over the next 11 months to maintain that stake and take production to 25,000 oz a year.

Andrews says he hopes to take annual production to 50,000 oz 'six months after that' and later expand the mine further. Underground exploration and development began the other day at Quintana, which lies in Colombia's Frontina Gold Belt, the country's most productive gold zone where Britain's Bolivar and Frontina Gold Mining Company first started digging in 1852.

At 5.5p, Cambridge shares have fallen from 2004's high of 19p, reflecting disappointment over Lomero-Poyatos. Still speculative, they could now be worth a recovery punt.