Ann: September Quarter 2023 - Quarterly Report, page-11

Golden Grove to the rescue - something I thought I'd never hear. If nothing else the complete flooding event at Capricorn may have inadvertently helped them out by allowing all management a clear runway and full focus on de-bottlenecking the ventilation and other stuff to improve Golden Grove although its encouraging to hear of the progress in dewatering at Capricorn, the campaign milling really hurts the economics but I guess is a necessary evil to give all the other parts of the mine a chance to show where improvements can be made and to keep everything running.

I assume at Capricorn they don't have the capacity to stockpile everything on the surface as it would oxidize, so its got to be campaign-treated just to keep all parts of the mill and the associated infrastructure running and not rusting up... too much water on-site at Capricorn and a game of pH and water storage tic-tac-toe to use to and dispose of excess water by various means and keeping the quality of water up to the process plant. Hopefully, the Esperanza South sub-level cave ore is not all "locked up" and difficult to get back into production - that could be the next hurdle, but stuff like this is to be expected with a once-in-a-century flood event at an operating mine. At least the insurers are slowly coming to a settlement. I see the QLD regulators are being their usual public service ass-covering unhelpful selves, with their "precautionary principle" rejection of some of the proposed works on site....