I think maybe I didn't articulate myself properly.
I'm not saying it is the most important or only factor, but I believe it is a major factor.
we know the strip ratio is going to be extremely low, especially in the early years, so I believe that point is somewhat moot.
we also know that the company delayed the scoping study in order to INCREASE the grade through additional drilling, so again, I don't think that's the major consideration.
Which leads me to reiterate and still believe we can't "accurately" (left that word out last time) speculate as to the economics of this operation because we don't know how much gold there is.
What I am saying is if there is only 5m Oz of gold with a 10 year mine life VS 70m Oz of gold with a 30+ year mine life will absolutely have a significant impact on Capex and financials of the operation.
We need a road, we need infrastructure, we need literally everything.
if the economics are to make say $100m per year for 5 years VS $100m for 30 years, then this will absolutely influence the standard to which the company builds out the operation, as well as the size of the operation in relation to human resources.
a very poor example, but highly illustrative is toilets.
a 2 day one time only festival will probably have porta loos, a 1 week festival may have the demountable, and a monthly event that's going to operate for the next 30 years will absolutely have something more permanent.
this same logic could be applied to the whole operation.
I believe the amount spent on camp, plant and other equipment will entirely be influenced by how permanent and more long the operation is likely to be there.
some companies establish their own rail infrastructure because the size of the resource and life of mine justify that investment.
there has been talk of different ore processing methods, in order to create a low cost operation, but why would a company pursue that? Because a high Capex can't be justified with a short life of mine, right?
why would we do ore sorting? From what I understand, and happy to be corrected here, is because it is cheaper to process less ore that is of a higher grade.
the only reason I can think of as to why we would do this is because the lower the grade, the higher the Capex and probably opex that is required to process it.
I'm just going to make numbers up to illustrate the point here, and this is where people way smarter than me need to do the math.
let's just say to process down to a cut off grade of 0.2g/t is say $100m of equipment, and to process to 0.3g/t is $75m of equipment.
if you are going to be there for 5 years, the economics probably won't justify the additional $25m for 0.1g/t over 5 years.
but the business case may start to add up after 10 years, and absolutely make sense after 20 years and are an absolute a no brainer after 30+ years.
the same applies to the road.
if it was 5mt of gold, we'd likely just use the winter ice road and fly things in and out, but if it's 70mt of gold then we'd probably want a year round road.
you're not going to throw money away if the resource doesn't justify the investment.
If I've misunderstood this, please let me know, and I'm more than happy to be corrected here, but I'm saying that the company are the best / only ones at all these factors with the appropriate amount of scrutiny required.
(20min delay)