march quarter is out , page-3

RMV,

Refer to the second page of the report - 2nd column, 2nd paragraph - development contributed 44% to the total ore processed - nearly all for Newton - last quarter it was only 29%. If you break down the costs between quarters it goes like this:
Dec Mar
Total Cost 1112 757
Less Royalties 189 117
Net 923 640
Development 406 186
Production 517 454

In other words production costs exc royalties are only $63 higher (517 less 454) than last quarter - not great but its hard to judge since different zones were being mined. This quarter there was more of Tyndall and less of Darwin South - Tyndall is an older zone with lower grades.

The payback is in the exploration results on page 3. Newton looks very impressive with high grades along down widths of over 40 metres (Z18408 @ 189.5 metres depth to Z18434 @ 236 metres depth). Darwin South and Read have also returned further finds. I'm suprised the CEO didn't make a separate announcement to hihglight these finds.

Whats great is that all of these finds aren't yet included in the JORC - furthermore Newton is open in all directions and hopefully there isn't much more capital development needed on Newton (I can't tell how much more from the report).

As the company starts mining the higher grades at Read and Newton and spends less time on getting through the ground to get there the costs should start to lower.

All of this is my opinion only - I'm not an expert on underground mining so any feedback would be greatly appreciated.