General Chat, page-3776

Evening All,

So I managed to speak with a couple of Engineers and Sales people at work. With respect to the Ore Sorting Technology, one of our Engineers was a service tech with a Company who deals in weighbelt feeder technology and has had some direct exposure with ore sorters. So general feedback is:

Reasons for slow uptake in Australia:

1. The geology of a lot of ore bodies don't really fit the technology when it comes to gold especially. I showed them the Nova ore body, and whilst they're not geos they've not really seen this type of mineralisation in Australian based projects;

2. Retrofitting to a brownfields project is 100% a waste of time and money - it just doesn't work;

3. I asked why some greenfields projects don't incorporate the technology even though the technology fits. Interestingly they reckon so many gold deposits are depleted, that it's not uncommon for the Principal to move existing equipment from the depleted site to the greenfields operation - i.e. it effectively becomes a brownfields operation;

4. As a general rule Australian miners can be a little "stubborn" when it comes to process changes - it ain't broke why fix it. So the design houses it makes it easier to just copy and paste the last processing circuit from projects before (over simplified I know) but concept is the same.

When I showed them the Nova announcements and the results from the ore sorting tests they were pretty impressed - and the main comment they made was the geology and the feedstock of the must be perfect for the ore sorting process - and that's the key - if you can take a low grade, low strip and consistent feedstock deposit the numbers could be very compelling. Possibly a payback period of maybe months by utilising this technology.

The other positives:

1. Power saving could be significant, because it should discard the unwanted material and saves processing unnecessary material through the circuit. Ball mills, conveyors etc. consume massive amounts of power. If unwanted material is discarded prior to entering the process it will have huge impact on power consumption; and

2. Enviro impacts are extremely positive - far less footprint so should help with enviro approvals process. Funnliy when looking at the Tomra website they have a co2 metric tonnes saved counter running - gimicky I know, but it's there all the same.

All in all the technology sounds like it is pretty sound - it's just not widely adopted in Australian operations for reasons listed above. It is a technology which is more readily adopted overseas. The more I'm speaking to people with materials handling knowledge the more comfortable I am with it. SS will reveal more details I'm sure, but good to get more details from people with more technical nouse than me.

Enjoy the evening - good luck all, I think a lot will be revealed in this first quarter of 2022. I feel like our time is about to come!