Ann: Coburn Project Commissioning of WCP Advancing Rapidly, page-10

"Negativity" for its own sake is an interesting concept. Never been tarred with that particular brush, so this is a first for me. Perhaps not very important as it is divorced from the facts and comes with smarmy comments like BossWho's that reflect more on the speaker's immaturity than add value. Also I would hardly say my comment was made with great aplomb, just chucking in a bit of trivia, forgetting it is now going into the religious fervour pool that has been built here...

There are a few industry players here that know very well head grade and operational efficiency are really key aspects of getting this operation to be the poster-child for 'getting it right', which there has been some brilliant work and actual performance on to now, but we are a long way from there yet. You may note my earlier positive and respectful comments around their process work as that was a key vulnerability, they knew it, and acted solidly. Not proven, but likely to be valid in the field. Zip-pah-dee-doo-dah on mining, only unexplained changes from publicly announced advice from their mining consultants. And no track record to base it on. If we were paying attention. Not saying it is broken, just a big job to do.

The mining side is the biggest risk, to EFFICIENTLY get that low head grade ore to the WCP at the required tonnages. It is no secret in the industry and is the first thing any competent external professional says to me when giving their take on the mine. Plus get the stripping done efficiently, which is no small thing, and why they are (of course) starting where there is none.

Ppl here can play rah-rah on what they see now, and drive SP if they like, nice to see and I truly do hope it plays out per the expressed sentiments. But until there is a proven performance that has never been got close to before with the tech employed, the risks of underperformance are real. Solvable, but real. Unsurprising, actually, and there is that 'ramp up period' to try to sort it, should the predictable issues surface.

By way of erratum, I have since seen a photo with just 4 dozers moving a DMU, albeit on flat wide land. None tethered via chains to add pulling power, but that is what was described to me and mentioned in my earlier post. Given that overburden removal is a key activity and nearby, relocating a couple of dozers to assist with mining DMU relocation is unlikely to be a significant drag on productivity, so there is that.