Ann: Nifty Copper Operations Update, page-52

I agree that its a worthwhile exercise comparing copper grades mined worldwide. But mining methods have a lot to do with it, e.g. massive open pits in South America, block cave in Mongolia vs narrow underground orebodies in different parts of the world. South American wages and water shortages plus depletion of the high grade shallow easy tonnes and lack of investment in replacing copper reserves is a worldwide story with copper mines.

Even after you have mined it there are so many variables between each underground mine that affect costs, such as spiral decline haulage in trucks vs shaft hoisting? How "vertical" is the orebody and how many development metres underground per stope or per tonne of ore?Wage, energy and fuel costs affect everything from mining, ventilation, haulage, crushing, milling and concentrates with transport to port.

Those mines in the DRC are literally mining 3% or better copper grades either underground or open pit because the bullets are literally flying overhead, and you are only ever one change of government/coup, one angry mob at the mine gate away from being shut down and having the mine nationalized or given to corrupt buddies of the new regime.

So I agree that the grades at Nifty actually are pretty decent for an underground mine but they still have the wages, energy costs and the cost of development and fixing everything that Aditya Birla neglected over the years, and there is lots of that, everyone who has owned Nifty in the past has been very short term and a rape and pillage attitude has resulted in an under-capitalised, ageing infrastructure and equipment, inefficient, high wage, geotechnically challenging mine without the capital or paste fill capacity having being spent to make it efficient or even safe to operate into the future....add on top if that its remote location and its a "turnaround challenge" of epic proportions. If Nifty had been done right in its early days and operated properly then it would still be viable today