General Discussion, page-192

From GB "In relation to the next lot of results; we're all eagerly awaiting them, and the ones after those, and the ones after those, and so on for the next 6, 9, 12 months. Per the 25th July announcement, there were over 4,000 samples rushed for analysis..."

For context - I was trying to determine what the root cause of all the delays for the assays. It seems industry wide but "what's up" with all the assay backlogs?

I reached out to Dean for an explanation and have posted this reply with his permission.

I thought other investors would find this helpful and explain why we need to be patient.

We currently have over 8,000 samples at the lab - more than I have ever had, I have been promised the backlog will remedy itself over the year. But we expect the assays to be fairly continuous for the rest of the year with a few weeks between each batch. And that is just for the Mangaroon batches we are rushing. We collect the samples on site as they are drilled and they are bagged, tagged and loaded into bulka bags (up to a ton each). We dispatch ~ three bulka bags every week and a half to two weeks from site to a freight company in Exmouth. These then take half a week to a week to get delivered from Exmouth to the lab. It then takes the lab a half week to a week to open up and sort the three tons of sample bags that have been delivered, separate them by rushed and non-rushed and then get the rushed samples into the system for crushing and pulverising in Perth. Once that is done, the pulverised samples are overnight couriered to Brisbane, because that is where the instruments for REE analysis are located. From there they are logged again into the system, fused into discs and analysed under the instruments. QAQC checks, reruns if required are then all performed by the lab and we get our certificates which we then review against our QAQC and get images, JORC tables and announcements written up. It is a process, but we now have a long line of samples at many stages of this process and will continuously for the rest of the year.The non-rushed samples will move through at their own pace - similar to the Illaara samples below. The Illaara samples (submitted in May) have started prep (crushing and pulverising) and are mostly in from the parking lot, we should start seeing them this month finally. And the auger samples from the Kimberley I expect soon. There is a tsunami of assay results coming that we will need to process and communicate to the market so please bear with us!