Site visit Brazil

Having island hopped my way across the Pacific ocean Auckland, Tahiti, Santiago due to an Av Gas shortage in New Zealand (pity the all blacks don’t run on Av Gas) I made it through to Parauapebas yesterday. The group was taken straight to the Antas mine site at around Midday. For the next 6 hours we were given a detailed presentation on the state of play with the current production at Antas, production upside,  and exploration progress and future plans. For exploration.
The plant itself is an amazing piece of equipment designed for optimum up time. They have redundancies built on top of redundancies. The likelihood of the plant ever having significant down time approaches zero in my opinion. The obvious pride and experience that has gone into the build is evident. We were led throughout the plant tour by Wayne Phillips and the range of solutions they have employed, from computerised video feeds of the frothers through to their control room where operators watch over mechanical and electrical process down to single moving part reagent feed devices,  is impressive and reassuring. My jet lagged brain doesn’t feel like it is doing justice to the work that has gone into this. It does have to be seen to be believed.

I made a point of asking Wayne Phillips were the proposed plant upgrade would be installed and he showed me the specific location and included the info that within their stated US$20 million budget was additional crushing, fee point from the ROM, 4 additional frothers   and the ball mill. All we need now is the ore to feed it for it to become a reality. Photos will follow for Bladder next week.

They have now drilled additional holes at the Azevedo prospect and I expect we will see assay results in coming weeks. The EM gear is very active checking all the local anomalies on the Antas tenement The usual program of analyse. drill, check. Drill again if warranted is on going and results show flow through  soon.
I’ve taken a number of photos which will probably have to wait until I am back next week to upload and share. One of the stand outs for me was the variety of wild life and  the cleanliness of the treatment dam. There are capybaras, alligators and birdlife breeding in the dam.

I am off to Pedra Branca this morning and then going back off the grid as we travel to Centrogold for 2 days plus of checking out the drilling works etc over there. I doubt that I will have access to the internet from that area. They seem quite excited about the potential to add value at Centrogold so it will be an interesting few days I suspect. When pressed about their intentions at Centro they were pointed about the ‘timeliness’ of the project. NO definitive decision has been reached about whether to keep it, sell it or JV it but what was emphasised strongly was that it would not get in the way of building PB which they are steadfastly focussed upon. If regulatory (which they seem very confident on) is approved in time they have a full mine development team ready willing and able.

PS Phil, IMO this company is VERY much focused on growing its copper inventory. Amongst other things I would also note that the Antas North production facility looks like it is getting ready for MANY years of hard, efficient work.  I suspect it will be purring along long after we have gone