A bit of a report on today's presentation for those interested....
Starting with the good news...
* The MRE includes all of the previous drilling... so the final number has been diluted by the drill results done at the inappropriate angle. To get a better idea of a truer number the example of the trial pit is useful. The drill assays for that patch of ground were 1.26 g/t average [prior to digging the pit] but the recovery was 1.7 g/t meaning the true grade average was about 1.9 g/t. Today's MRE reports an average grade of 0.96 g/t and that will remain the official number but if all of the drill assays had been based on the correct drill angle of 115° we would have a better number.
* Cube excluded several good intercepts from the MRE assessment for a couple of reasons. Some of the holes which showed good grades below 200m's were excluded because they were spaced more than 20m's away from other holes [a function of infill drilling previous holes which were a) less deep and b) the earlier wrong angle. The Co wants to next drill the 2 large gaps, to possibly connect the deposit into a single entity, and that will rectify some of this. [The budget has been done for this drilling, it will be about $1.6m and the Co has the funds in hand...probably starting in April]
* The Co intends to test the deposit at depth @ 115°... the 2 previous holes were mostly to do with accurately locating the dolerite .... Jeff stated that if they had drilled at 115° at the first attempt they would have missed the deposit by 100m's since it changes its orientation at depth.
* @D1326 ..in answer to your question... MRP have a few serious inquiries which are ongoing... that's about all he could tell me
I participated in the sell down [sold about half @11].. when I told Jeff this he said he had fielded calls from other shareholders who also were disappointed by the announcement. He was at pains to point out that the MRE is what is known as a "global" assessment and so it includes a lot of material which in the mining process will actually just be put to one side and never processed. Once the Co reaches the point of producing a pit design the average grade which goes to the mill is higher.
* The final clear positive is the deposit is still open in both directions ... with the Northern stockworks looking the most prospective.
The negatives....
* Still quite a bit of discovery drilling needs to happen. The main gripe about the Co is they have not delineated exactly how they might proceed to commercial production ... JV?, toll milling?, their own mill?... it's all up in the air [although the impression I got is the Co most favours some sort of JV in association with a nearby mill]. It will stay uncertain until they define the deposit more thoroughly. In the presentation Jeff expressed his personal opinion MRP will get to 1M ozs [and I think that is a fair statement]. In conversation afterwards Jeff expressed the view that MRP is now probably at the point of having 250,000 ozs of commercial gold.
MRP Price at posting:
9.7¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
