The mine has been raped and pillaged for sure.. on the other hand a lot of juniors are doing the same. KIS with an old Tungsten mine, CNB with Duchess, AOU Nepean, and many others.
it takes a long time to define and set up infrastructure. It has been said most new copper mines take more then 8 years to get into production. CYM is taking about 18 months from acquisition.
Mining leases etc are already in place. So while it would be nice to have fresh rock and a fresh start it would be tough going trying to find and define 650,000t of contained copper at a decent grade let alone setting up infrastructure to get into production.
They had absolutely no data from the Hollandaire deposit and took a sample and successfully leached this very quickly - "The Hollandaire material is very suitable for our methodology and it has outperformed our initial expectations. To produce such a clean copper plate of high purity so quickly is an extraordinary result". it was from semi massive and massive sulphide so high grade with more margin for error however it demonstrates their capabilities to leach sulphide material.
MLX had very limited knowledge and therefore could only plan to leach the oxide and not the sulphide.
I believe most of the Geotechnical issues are somewhat void considering CYM doesn't plan to go underground. Enough underground drilling has been done on the existing pit so no need to mine or drill from underground.
The SXEW being new and unfamiliar will not delay or hamper the project. The solution they will used, will be much of the same solution they used in Indo I'm assuming. More risk lies in the heap leach pads themselves. If anything the new plant will increase recovery.
The new SXEW will increase profits and efficiency over the lom through less chance of breakdowns, and installed robotics.
in 2009 finders resources, Barry's old company actually purchased an SXEW from Straits and it is what they used in Indonesia.
All I'm trying to say is that a lot of homework has been done. Prior to the acquisition they would have looked into the well known geology and gathered so much information. Information which made them think they can definitely pull this off. And they have pulled it off before when copper prices were under $3.
As the project goes on you'll probably notice an increase in recovery once in production similar to finders. Their recovery rates were a lot lower in the BFS compared to when producing. It added millions to its EBITDA when this increased.
so while some of the data is old, out of date and may have some things missing. The process was well proven by Straits.
I remember seeing photos of the underground shafts in a very old announcement. Barry seemed very excited seeing the blue and green copper streaming down the walls inside, The Nifty mine, practically leaching itself in the time it has been left in care and maintenance.
CYM Price at posting:
21.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)