processing, page-3

"still do not know why 10 000 tonnes took so long to process unless there were major problems"

Probably more like minor issues that they spent time on. Any major problems should have been disclosed before now. The only significant "problem" appears to be a considerable amount of gold in circuit and this was reported as it was being revealed by the assays and calculations of gold in/gold out. Most of that gold will be recovered and they will no doubt be looking at methods to reduce the amount of gold in circuit for stage 2. There were probably early delays as they were investigating why less gold was being recovered than expected by visual indications of visible gold in feed ore and later indicated by feed grades and tail grades when assays were received perhaps up to around 4 weeks later. Until those assays were received and conclusions made about where the gold might be it would have been very prudent to proceed very slowly.
Even a much more expensive full scale plant built to its final design will have commissioning issues to work through and is ramped up gradually usually over at least 2-5 months (and often longer) before being ramped up to full scale. Most of the more typical issues are not reported in detail during commissioning of any plant- unless they are material enough for reporting. Abu’s plant would have had its commissioning phase but also it was never meant to be the final design so more time would have been spent on looking at ways to increase efficiency through modifications to assist in the design for stage two modifications. It's not the quantity of ore (10,000t) that is important to how much time was spent on trial mine processing but rather working through normal commissioning processes as well as identifying mods for stage 2 improvements.