Big Jig - I called a mate who works in road construction in NSW. He reckons for just grading and rolling, one team can do about 10,000m2 per day on average. Assuming Tanami Road is about 7m wide, and our haulage route is about 77km long: Area=7m*77,000m=539,000m2. At an upgrading rate of 10km2/day , it'll take one team about 54days to upgrade the track. So if we had 2 teams of roller and graders, it would take about 5 weeks to upgrade our haulage route. That about works in with the 4 weeks Darren quoted (30/10/2014).
However, if the upgrade "design" (referred to 4/8/14 and 7/10/14) is more than just a grade and a roll it'd take longer (with only two teams utilised).
If the road is left unsealed, I'm guessing we'd be needing to re-grade our haulage route regularly? Not sure how often, every few months? 6 months? Yearly? Has any one ever trucked this route? Any ideas?
I'm guessing/hoping all that those road upgrade costs have been accounted for in the "All in Sustaining Cost" ($750 - $870) as provided in the announcement on 30/09/2014. Which are noted as "Includes operating costs and sustaining capital, maintenance, further delineation and extensional exploration. Does not include NT Gov mineral royalty".
YouTube of the Tanami Road:
... Look at the 7minute mark. It shows a couple of graders at work. And the commentator states that the road is "not too bad".
From a brief bit of Googling - it looks like there has been a lot of petitioning for an all weather upgrade. It looks like the recent "white paper on developing the NT" is rather big on the importance of infrastructure upgrades. The NT Gov seems to acknowledge this in their "NT Gov response to the white paper", they write - "...Upgrades and all weather access to several key arterial roads such as the Tanami Road, Victoria Highway and Arnhem Highway will support the economy and provide better access for remote communities. Once the upgrades have occurred, increased maintenance funding will be required to maintain the standards.".
I'm hoping the proper all-weather Government funded upgrade gets underway sooner rather than later, so ABU can benefit from the upgrade.
Griff666 - I agree.
Firstly - I'm looking forward to seeing a bit more info on Management's plans in the next Quarterly Update.
Secondly - If it does look like we might need to stockpile for any length of time, I agree it seems to make sense to use the pilot plant to at least start getting our company some cash flow.
-> If management did that, could we also cart the tailings from that trial mine processing plant to the Coyote plant to extract anything left behind? (I think I recall seeing somewhere that the recovery rate on the Coyote Plant was expected to be a fair bit higher than the Trial Mining Plants recovery rate). [Does any one know what is to happen to the tailings already accumulated from the trial mining phase? Will they be run through the Coyote Plant?]
Thirdly - Your prediction of first production by start of June seems to work with Darren's presentation (25/11/2014). Assuming they start on site at the end of March / start of April. Then one month (April) for road works and site establishment. One month (May) for pre-strip and Coyote preparation. The next month (June) (Weeks 8 to 12) is predicted to be "mining/stockpiling of ore and plant re-commissioning".
Saltiga62 - no, no one would panic over what has been common knowledge for a very long time and is in numerous announcements.
yes, I agree that given the opportunities just around the corner, ABU represents a good opportunity. Although what would I know. I also thought that when I first bought in at 69c (equivalent) p.c.
ABU Price at posting:
31.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)