Ann: September Quarterly Activities and Cash Flow Report, page-226

from the company on this debacle

"The financial outcomes of the DFS were based on a throughput rate of 2.5mtpa, which is what we are currently permitted for. This has driven the majority of the outcomes, as announced in the DFS. At this 2.5mtpa throughput rate we have a strongly economic project.

However, as we’ve explained, we have additional capacity in the autoclaves (they are larger than we need). This represents a big opportunity as, subject to permitting, it will allow us to push more ore through the plant and maximise metal production. This capacity will be particularly useful as the mine head grade starts to fall away, we could feed the plant more ore to maintain the overall metal unit production.

Given this represents important opportunity for us, we have designed the “back-end” of the plant to be able to cope with the higher throughput rate. Retrofitting additional capacity at a later date will not be cost effective nor practical, so we have factored this into the initial design and therefore, the DFS Capital Cost estimate of US$1.5b. There will be some additional capex required if we were to move to increase throughput, but we don’t expect this to be significant (ie. We can upsize things like the ore-preparation for relatively low capital cost).

I think the source of confusion is that the capital cost estimate reflects production capacity that is higher than the other outcomes of the DFS reflect."