I think following the Lady Ida approval from shareholders, there is no reason why we don't expand our processing plant. I can understand why they've been hesitant in expanding prior to now because they weren't sure they had the mine life, but after Lady Ida gets approved, to me it's a no-brainer.
Lady Ida has about 150koz of reserve and plenty of exploration potential too from memory. Between all our tenements, I think we've got about 300koz of reserve and 500koz+ of resource. Don't take my word for those numbers. So it'd be silly not to add another mill and expand to at least 50koz per annum.
In terms of whether we have just expand our current operation by adding another mill and float circuit, etc or purchase another whole new plant at one of our tenements (Macphersons, Geko or Lady Ida for example), these are my thoughts:
- Those 3 are close enough from memory that haulage costs will be minimal.
- Constructing a whole new plant along with Mill, screens, floats, reagents, offices, control room, air/water services will be a lot more compared to simply increasing the capacity of their current pumps/tanks etc. I'm sure they would've built some of their equipment with the capacity to increase throughput in the future, so some items may not even need to be changed.
- Logistics, deliveries, mobile equipment, etc is a lot simpler/cheaper if you remain at the same location.
- Mt Dimer is the only one that might warrant a new plant, but that will depend on drill results over the next few months.
Anyways, some other non-related notes:
- Looking forward to the next few months with Timor drilling and Lady Ida approval, should put a higher base on the share price. The directors have done a good job to lock Lady Ida in, will be good for us and them to finally see some reward for their efforts the last 10 years.
- Not sure why they hid the great Mt Dimer results in the quarterly. I called Graham and asked him and his reason was timing and that a detailed report would follow later this month. But that doesn't really explain why it couldn't be it's own separate announcement to create some interest. These little wins need to be promoted, not hidden in a quarterly which only holders basically read.
- Graham also mentioned on the phone that buybacks, consolidations and dividends are discussed in every board meeting but he couldn't say any more. I personally think a buyback is preferred over dividends and I think a consolidation can only be good for us long term. People say consolidations kill the share price, but that's often companies like CLZ that are exploring and trying to squeeze every dollar out of investors via issuing shares constantly so need consolidations to change the share price from 0.1c to 10c. But a gold producing company like BCN actually have fundamentals behind it that represent value, so I'd be surprised if it killed the share price long term.
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