Cheers Prhb, though as others have touched on, the interview Nic did today contained a lot of information..... I know I am being impatient, as I do think Nic and the team are working very hard to ensure that ALK has a strong future (they are all shareholders as well as being embedded in the local community).
The interview did indeed have some very interesting points (considering it only went for 3minutes!) - Cheers for that overview
@PocketsIf I can discuss them further:
Firstly, Nic mentioned that they had indeed got approval last year for development drives (which we knew), but also confirmed my thoughts they have done a large amount of, what I think anyone else would conclude is pre-development of the U/G, like what BGL has been doing for almost 2 years ("we have been doing vertical development at Roswell for quite some time, people can see in the graphics in the announcement the extent of the development we have done, finally, after mining just development ore for,
several months, we are finally firing our first stope...").
"ramping up and all guns blazing".... "23-24kt stope.... then behind that, we have a much larger nearly twice the size..."
My rough estimate would obviously be around 44-50kt - so if the grade sits around 5g/t, perhaps 11,000 ounces, which, if mined this quarter is clearly a huge increase in ounces, though it also perhaps implies that production would have not met guidance without the permitting going through.
"we want to be mining by, certainly this time next year, we want to be mining the Roswell ore body at a rate of around 1.1 to 1.2mtpa."
The question was then asked, will production gradually ramp up to the above rate by this time next year.....
Nic - "it will go with a bit of a bang to be honest.... we will be very close to that rate inside 3 or 4 months as we wine down on our existing mining areas and we will have pretty much the whole production team focused on that area (Roswell) within 6 months time.
"a lot going on for us between now and the end of June"
* Quarterly report due out late in the week/Monday next week.
* Kaiser updated MRE next week
* Late May/Early June Scoping Study for Boda/Kaiser
* "We will put out an update when we finish the budgeting process for Tommi, ideally giving people a 5 year look ahead before the end of June".
The point is perhaps most interesting for me, and likely a major reason why ALK has not run with the rest of the sector... lack of clarity on the Tommi mine plan. Though the 1.1.1.2mt coming from just Roswell is huge news, I had not fathomed they could achieve this sort of rate.
So finally getting a clear picture of what the company envisages for Tommi and Roswell over a 5 year period is surely what the market wants... clarity and achievable targets.
A thumbsuck tells me, as has been discussed on the threads in previous months, the cost escalation for the highway diversion has clearly caused the company evaluate the opportunity cost of not doing the diversion now (perhaps not ever) and sacrificing a port of the open pit reserves, which I can only imagine, would likely have not covered the huge costs (or marginally so) to focus on U/G mining only. It seems they are very confident in Rosewell, so much so that most/all of the production team are going to focus solely on it. I would have thought from a redundancy, keeping at least one other U/G operation going would provide a buffer for any issues that arise.
If they only produce at Roswell reserve grade, 2.6g/t x 1.2mtpa (div by 31) x 94% recov = 94.6k p.a.
Easy to see why they are going to heavily drill out Roswell, if further ounces are proven up, then the company has it's 'core' producing asset, which will hopefully be bolstered over time by other U/G ore.
Like some, I am surprised he did not mention the exploration results, but they will undoubtedly come.
Still a way to go, but ALK seem to be slowing catching on to what investors want to see and know.
(20min delay)