For environmental reasons and to not get into a fight with the sami and others, I am certain that further mines and expansions will all be under ground. And we need to ramp ore mining to ~400ktpa by 2025 and eventually ~10mtpa ore somewhat after 2030. I expect all the expansions to be under ground as I dont see a way to get permission for surface mines of that scale. We need someone we can trust and work well with. I still hope LKAB can be that partner, as a contractor but not as a JV partner. It would still fit well. Maybe Boliden but I dont know much about them. I dont think any other mining company would do because they need to operate within Swedish juristication and thats gonna be hard for any outsider. So we are gonna go with one of the two.
On the topic of 1m depth slice gives you one year of mining result. Ok, lets use a calculator. I dont know how dense the material is that we mine. But probably somewhere between 3 and 4 g/cm³. Lets plop in the numbers: 100 kt = 100'000 t 3 g/cm³ = 3 t/m³, 4 g/cm³ = 4 t/m³ 100'000 t / 3 t/m³ = 33'333 m³, 100'000 t / 4 t/m³ = 25'000 m³ 50 m wide strip, 1 m depth = 50 m² * length 33'333 m³ / 50 m² = 666,66 m long strip 25'000 m³ / 50 m² = 500 m long strip
So we have to mine a strip of length between 500 and 666 meters to get to the production of 100ktpa ore and reach our initial vittangi target. 2 people with a shovel can do that easily (joking)
At least for Vittangi, that sounds pretty good. But we still cant do that to the entire ressource. As we expect, Niska and Nunasvaara north, east, south are likely all connected under ground. And it would make sense to make a giant mine out of that, under ground. Still needs a strong and trustworthy partner. We need to get people on board. The sooner we have the partners in place, the sooner we can ramp up production. Its all about timing. Talga needs a burning sense of urgency.
TLG Price at posting:
$1.45 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
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