Settelment ? TAFTA ? WIN ? LOSE ?, page-148

Resources and reserves especially need a lot of drilling. While there are lots of high potential targets, they would be years away from becoming a resource or reserve. So it's only wild guesses how large, high grade and valuable they'll be.

If they proved to be lower grade than Chatree, then they would not provide much benefit.

If they were marginally higher grade than Chatree (0.8g/t), then they could provide only a decent benefit (because of higher trucking cost).

If they were >1g/t, then they could provide a big boost, depending on the size of any of these deposits.


I don't expect Kingsgate to be building a 3rd plant in the next 5 years, so the production potential depends on grade.

We'll be starting with 1 plant (the lower cost of refurbishment plant), but restarting 2 plants is not too difficult (relative to building a 3rd plant). From memory, the 2 plants can do something like 6.2mtpa.

6.2mtpa @ 0.6g/t = 120k oz (<0.6g/t would probably be realistic with ore mixed with low grade stockpiles, upon startup)
6.2mtpa @ 0.8g/t = 160k oz (if a decent boost is given, eg. quartz lease)
6.2mtpa @ 1g/t = 200k oz (a lot of high grade ore would be needed, since it's usually 0.6-0.7g/t from memory from the 2015 pits)

A 300k oz pa scenario requires either:
6.2mtpa @ 1.5g/t (a very large boost to grade, needs lots of >2g/t ore to mix with the 0.6-0.7g/t ore).

Or a 3rd plant with 1g/t average. Which would take >5 years and lots of capital investment. It would also require lots of new reserves to me proved up, to justify the investment, I expect.