The thing I see with ZMI is tha thet deposit is deep. Capital development costs (the decline/tunnel specifically) of accessing a deep resource can be prohibitive, without even taking in consideration the requirements for getting power down there and the plant and other surface infrastructure.
in Australia a meter of decline development costs somewhere around $5k. its quite variable, but $5k is good enough for this discussion and makes the maths easier. as for length, about a steep as the trucks can handle is 1:7, so for every vertical meter, there are 7 lateral meters, so at $ 5k/m, 1 vertical meter costs $35k worth of development. so to go 400m vertically and hit this bit we're looking at spending $14 million just on the tunnel.
Alot of these hits are smaller stringy bits which mean alot of development to get the ore out (i.e. non-economic), so here's hoping that there will be a continuous structure at least 400m high as that sort of chunk will be worth mining. some big stopes or block cave where the ratio of ore value to capital swings way to the plus side.
Picking these little bits up on the way down can be beneficial, particularly to provide comissioning stock to the plant, but still need something big at the bottom - i.e. maybe double what we have, since someone is going to have to be comfortable enough to stump up 250 - $300m of capital to get us going.
ZMI Price at posting:
0.5¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
