It's just more spin - nothing changes from the past. Note their disclaimer at the bottom of page 3 of the announcement that clearly states "No new information"
"The initial metallurgical test work results are very encouraging" - no they are terrible.
"Namdini is not a low‐grade deposit when you look at it from a metallurgical viewpoint" - the deposit is low grade and refractory - qualifying the statement by saying it is from a metallurgical perspective stretches credibility.
"Cardinal and their consultants have identified a wide range of additional options to increase gold recoveries from the current ‘base case’ recovery of 75% to 76%" - At least they are clear here - the recovery as they see it now is 76%. Of course there are many options for treating low grade refractory ores but are they economic - their lack of comment on the wide range of options identified suggests they have no idea at this point in time
They could have put out a shorter version of this announcement without the spin
- company confirms Namdini is a large low grade refractory deposit
- a range of options have been identified to process the ore but we don't know if any will work
In respect of their much used 90% recovery figure they are only giving half the story according to their current understanding:
- Just like last week the deposit is still largely refractory (76% overall recovery)
- They still have to process all of the ore through a mill (ie: crush it and grind it) - and they have stated previously it is hard ore so this will be expensive
- Once it is crushed and ground they still have to put all of the ore in a float plant. There are two product streams from the float plant - one is a concentrate which comprises 2-3% of the tonnes feed into the plant and 90% of the gold fed into the plant - the other is waste which contains 97-98% of the tonnes fed into the plant and 10% of the gold
- The concentrate will then likely require fine grinding to be able to extract the gold (again lots of power consumption for the hard ore) - their previous announcement stated that this process (and subsequent processes) would result in the loss of an additional 14% of the gold
- So in summary their current best estimate for recovery for the entire deposit is 76% - 10% of the gold is lost in producing a concentrate and a further 14% of the gold is lost from processing that concentrate.
