Gold miner Matsa has a strategy of mining really small deposits and then moving on – and it’s paying off big time.

Matsa (ASX:MAT) made a better-than-expected $5.5 million profit from its recently completed 12,704oz Red Dog open pit in the eastern goldfields.

The junior miner said shareholders will receive a 1c dividend for every 5 shares held (0.2c per share) and “will announce details shortly”.

Shares were up about 3 per cent to 17.5c in morning trade.

Matsa has a strategy of mining smaller gold deposits within in its Lake Carey project in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields.

It has an ore purchase agreement with AngloGold Ashanti Australia under which ore is delivered to the major miner’s Sunrise Dam operation for processing.

The Matsa share price over the past 12 months.

The company says it has already identified two more potential small scale operations within the current Lake Carey Project area “which could be brought into production this year”.

Matsa executive chairman Paul Poli told Stockhead that one of these was smaller than Red Dog, the other potentially “quite larger”.

“We have done a prefeasibility study on one, and we are commencing work to put that into production,” Mr Poli said.

We are [also] commencing work programs on the other — it appears that this one could be a very interesting new deposit.

“We expect both could be brought into production this year.

“One we are hoping 7 or 8 months, the other in 9 or 10 months.”

Mr Poli said the company believed there was still numerous gold deposits to be found within its Lake Carey project.