copper confusion, page-102

Hi all - I did get on a wagon a bit so will restrict myself from now on to contribution only and refrain from any inflammatory babble, its not constructive so best stayed away from.

Certainly as XXXXXXWWWWW pointed out the occurrence of native copper in the region is quite common and not unigue to the Rockland deposits. The thing that strikes me is the level of enrichment and as a geo it is pretty special to see the pics of the core and read the results. Makes any resource geo start thinking about how you go about quantifying these things knowing that these things are notoriously difficult to get right due to heterogeneity and nugget effect. Sometimes you only really know exactly how much metal there is after mining the ore zones is completed.

It is still a zoned and domainal orebody with transitions between the different forms of mineralisation. Copper oxide to supergene native copper +- chalcocite to primary chalcopyrite dominated mineralisation. I like IOCG's and the Mount Isa region certainly has many different forms of this deposit style, each deposit brings their own different challenges to mine efficiently.

The process flowchart shows the steps involved in getting the products out and the ASX releases on the Met test work undertaken certainly indicates that good recoveries should be achieved. Apart from the +40mm large native copper (~7%)that is shown to be removed post crushing and screening, the flowchart shows the sequential extraction of the products and indicates that the entire plant is required to process ore. It does appear that some NCu (~7% of feed material) could be produced but when weighed against stockpiling and double handling possibly wouldn't have any real significant advantage to undertake before completion of plant. And they would need to commission the plant first and you generally do not use your best ore for that. The good stuff waits for the plant to settle and the optimal recoveries being achieved otherwise dollars go to the tails. Plants also like steady uniform input to be optimal. High variations in feed grade/ore type etc can cause havoc in trying to get stable and optimal operation.

It is also not clear if the cobalt in the native copper and oxide ore is recoverable, also the copper oxides, while a small component of the overall resource, do not appear to be incorporated into any recovery process although maybe I have missed something.

Getting plants to perform to specification can be a bit of a magic act but that's what metallurgists are put on this planet for (HAHA) As a production geo I used to hate seeing any of my ore that I worked hard on to put on the ROM pad have the goodies go to the tails.

Personally I would like to see information on the tonnages of the different ore types but that is just me wanting more info.

I don't have a problem RNF is you want clarification from someone else but be warned us geo's tend to like arguing about differences in interpretations (comes from licking too many rocks I have been informed by mining engineers - and don't get me going on those guys!!!!)

Cheers