I used to be in TAM but sold for a small profit a couple for months ago. I pop in for a look every now and then and saw this thread and thought I'd offer a little.
The main reason I sold was I saw falling grades going into a pretty small mill. IMO once the higher grade U/G ore is depleted/becomes deeper/harder to access then TAM have a mill that appears to be designed to run at around the 300000TPA throughput mark to produce around 40K Oz PA. All well and good at 5g/T but doesn't look real flash at 4 or 3 g/T. For instance if they can't get anymore than 300KTPA through the mill then at 3g/T this equates to about 24K Oz PA for probably slightly reduced unit costs if more ore comes from open cuts rather than U/G, but I'd be amazed if the production costs dropped by the same 40% as the gold output.
They have lots of good ore, but to me the mill needs to be upsized to treat what they have. This is all assumption on my behalf but having worked in mills for my entire working life I've yet to see a company who will not shove everything they've got into the mill as fast as it'll take it. Which leads me to believe TAM is doing exactly that. Once you maximise your throughput/recovery you then need to make sure the mill stays on for as long as possible ie maximise your up-time. This means doing everything you can to minimise or reduce unplanned stoppages. They happen but you don't want preventable ones.
2 things in essence limit a mills throughput. Grinding circuit capacity and metal recovery. In TAM's case the recovery would be limited by leach circuit capacity. This is how long it takes the ground ore to move through the circuit whilst achieving, say , 93% Au dissolution. The faster you go, the lower the leach recovery. This is why I think they need to upsize the mill.
That's my story anyway. I reckon if they can upsize the mill they'd be in a way stronger position.
TAM Price at posting:
73.2¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
