Or perhaps even less. Fundamentally the costs for this are easy...

Or perhaps even less.

Fundamentally the costs for this are easy to establish by TG6. The approvals are easy. There are two main costs:

• trucking the material to the toll processor
• Paying the toll processor to process the material

The piece that will take the time is TG6 establishing whether to shift perhaps 80kt of dirt and rock off-site is profitable. To establish profitability, they need to establish what revenue would be generated as the costs should be reliably estimated. This needs the grade of the material (which TG6 are doing). TG6 needs confidence about a minimum likely recovery rate (but past met work may already provide that). The processing method appears to be the mill equivalent of an 8hr or 24hr bottle roll leach tests using a small crush size like P80. Once TG6 have confidence there is a margin to be made, that the margin is not negligible and likely to be delivered I'd expect them to press go - move the material and get it toll processed with both steps happening quickly. I'd like to see a truckload or 1kt sized trial done ASAP after they have assay's confirming the material looks worthwhile to toll process. That test would enable the market to clearly see and believe the likely outcome of processing perhaps 80kt of stockpile and hundred's of kt of laterite.

One wild-card is laterite material that will make up some of the ore in the piles under consideration and is likely to be at the bottom/far end as it would have been the first thing removed. A past met test took some material with a 1.71g/t assay result and put it through 2, 4 and 8 hour bottle roll tests for 1.43g/t, 1.49g/t and 1.49g/t recoveries (87% at 4hr and 8hr). If the plan is to use an 8hr milling timeframe, around 87% recovery of laterite assay results appears likely, which is an acceptable outcome.

There however appears to be some material in the laterite that doesn't come through in Fire Assay's and the final recovery rate was 2.61g/t or 153% of the measured feed grade. I'm sure competent mills can figure this out if extra milling time is worthwhile but this test didn't move from the 2hr to 8hr mark so it looked done and dusted so its an opportunity that could easily slip through some processes. It could mean final recovery rates exceed modelled levels and in aggregate may exceed 100% of the assay's on the material being sent for toll treating. TG6 needs to do more testing on the laterite to understand if this oddity is repeatable. If it is, laterite material may warrant a longer milling time.