Yes I recognise the October MRE was a slight downgrade, but I was answering the question around current proven and probable reserves and minelife and can confirm enough resource fora 1.54 mt configuration for 20 years - 24 years. You do expect with MREs they revise proven and probable reserves, given you take economic considerations in establishing them. Page 9 of this link gives a picture of what the JORC code is trying to do, and the factors that are used, in moving measured and indicated resource to the proven and probable category.
http://www.jorc.org/docs/JORC_code_2012.pdf
As to the hunch, I would disregard my comments therein as it does boil down to some views I had in this post and when seeking to understand issues in PLS hitting there own DFS recovery rates etc, whether they are right or wrong I don't know, but I suspect the PLS resource and AJM resource have subtle differences (but could be wrong as obviously haven't the indepth research as others on the deposits and processes used themselves here - still coming up to speed). I gave some views (whether informed or misinformed in this post some time back Refer: Post #:
41474370 My understanding is also a lot of the capex spends that PLS is doing appear
also to be targeted towards the floatation stage, but I will say understanding resource differences ultimately will become a known when the AJM and PLS plants run without issues. Anyway, as I possibly am mis-informed I will just say again hunch only and time will tell, so best I get back and focus on AJM.
At a high level, the more reliance on floatation in your process flowsheet that opens up questions on i) the coarseness of the ore and/or ii.) potential to liberate the spodumene from the ore and hence need for ball milling to do so and/or iii.) deleterious elements need to be dealt with further down the process flowsheet because they are in the lattice of the spodumene and cannot be appropriately dealt with at the DMS stage. Floatation product occurs further downstream than DMS product in the process flowsheet, so in theory is a more costlier process. In achieving say a 70% recovery rate, and hence producing 6% grade spodumene, in theory what you want is x percentage points of that recovery rate to be from DMS and the remainder in floatation, for example, if possible.
Turning to AJM, in the latest quarterly - Post #:
44364076 - a comment on page 3 is made that
"The coarse product circuit performed in line with expectations throughout the quarter, producing 24,038 wmt, whilst operational performance in the fines circuit was sustained, producing 18,244 wmt. Lower production in the fines circuit was attributable to higher deportment of lithia to the coarse circuit."
That suggests too me that just over half the product produced in that quarter was from the HMS/DMS circuit (and not floatation). That is the AJM process flowsheet has a DMS product stage and a floatation product stage, which was detailed in the 2016 DFS.
If my comment is misinformed, please correct me. Not clear the PLS mix, given what it has been doing last few months to compare, so I guess going forward will provide that information
Finally, and hopefully noone sees this as cross promotion, but this Ann - pages 4 to 7 - provides some good high level information on DMS versus floatation and they are the only relevant pages to read and what that might mean for resource differences for AJM and PLS, but as I said guessing here and please disregard etc IMO etc Post #:
41005358
All IMO
(20min delay)