Bloomy and Nesh, Guys you are both spot on with every comment. I first want to say: I love the whole TBA story and I know there is no shortage of gold and “that them there hills” they own. BUT, a big BUT. TBA started building the leach vats in Nov 21. I’ve never known a mining company to take 5 months to build a pint sized 40,000 tonne leach vat and still not even completed or lined (Ann 29th April) It’s a max 3-4 week job. That includes, excavation, survey, compaction, plastic lined including engineered sign off. Bloom you are on the money with the liquor ponds, for vats you only need one pond for the liquor pumped from vat through carbon columns. For a 40,000 tonne vat there is no need for a PLS pond. Just requires a storage area after the carbon columns for a reload of the chemicals. It’s a re circulating load. One pond only required and Max 4 x the liquor throughput of the recirculating load for 12 hours is standard. Assume 100tph throughout max pond size 1200m3. So only a tiny single Barren pond/reload pond required. I’m calling even smaller than your generous pond Bloom. I’ve never in my life seen catch ponds that big except for Brazil where they leach 5 million tonnes of ore at a time. Even for 5 million tonne vats or heaps, they are not as big as TBA ponds. Considering it’s mini setup. WTF were they thinking? Someone is obviously playing TBA directors. Nesh is right, no mining guys on the board so they are getting played. Those extra 2 ponds ( which are not even needed) are big enough to be used as vats. Because only one pond is required why not use the other two monster ponds (they don’t need), fill with ore and use as leach vats as well. Any fool can tell it’s an amateur design apart from building ponds not required, but because appears they designers haven’t taken into account evaporation in the central NWQ. It averages40 deg in summer. The surface area of everythjng designed is 5 times surface area too large. Any dam builder or water storage expert will tell you “ go deep “ keep the surface area as small as possible. These guys have done the exact opposite. (Judging by the size of the machines as a measure guide) Massive surface area and shallow depth. Where is the quantity of water needed to run and keep full this disaster coming from to make up from evaporation? The design of the whole leach section is a complete failure in my opinion. To anyone in the metallurgical processing understands TBA has broken every rule in the “Bible of Metallurgy” for Gold Vat/heap leach processing. Wonder what the process circuit looks like, if they have one yet! Someone needs to take this project by the scruff of the neck and shake out and shake up. Talk about tearing money up. I would appreciate any fellow Mets reading this post to give an opinion. Give an honest opinion, you know where I’m coming from. I know I’m going to get a beating ftom this post, but some things need to be said out loud. I’m sure TBA will eventually get into production but the cost to get there is eating up the cash unnecessarily and soaking up of cash for these FU designs which in turn requires TBA to constantly issue more paper, this causing unnecessary dilution to TBA shareholders and a constant stress pressure on directors. Also looking from the outside in and taking into account Nesh comments on a board with no mining experience, it seems whoever is actually managing the day to day operations at the mine site is a first timer, using TBA as a practice event. That’s actually the Crux of my post. Directors better start making some changes. Can’t keep changing the “ Gold Pour date” like watching cement dry.
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