Yes their reporting is not very clear.In the early days they...

Yes their reporting is not very clear.
In the early days they were reporting wet tonnes produced (the higher numbers looked better?).....had to come from belt integrator or density gauge on final con line..neither 100% accurate.
Put these in the stock tracking model for simplicity.
I used estimate of 4%m.c. to get wcp recovery number from the production numbers published.

eom wcp production (and recovery) figures should be calculated from stockpile survey volumes same as the way mined ore tonnes are calculated. Every other mineral sands producer pumps final con out to a cyclone on hmc stacker. A few days after the stacker is swung to start a new cone the previous stack is around 7% mc..... dry enough for trucks to cart safely. In the summer it can get as low as 5% waiting to be fed into the msp. or shipped. The msp crew also need to know the mc% being fed into plant for their recovery number calcs. STA pump final con to a filter belt to get mc lower and then onto a conveyor belt stacker.

Mineral to be shipped has to be sampled prior to loading and a certifcate showing mc of proposed cargo and tml certifcate (mineral sands around 14%) provided to the ships captain under international maritime regulations. Even the ilmenite which STA shipped would have to have had the mc calculated, usually just under 1% even though its been through the dry mill.

Belt weightometers accurate to plus or minus a couple of %
Ship survey is basically how much the ship goes down from the start of loading to the end of loading with ballast pumped out during loading etc in the calculations.
On a panamax size vessel 50t loaded gives abt 1cm movement down.

Shipped tonnes have to be back calculated to dry tonnes (from the shipment sample) as both loading belt integrator or ship survey give wet tonnes, and the client doesn't want to pay for water.


kcf