Yep it looks like soon shareholders should be able to add normal shipping costs to favourable mining characteristics including a very low strip ratio, mining that is simply rip and strip (no blasting). Its then wash, sort and ship.
Lets look at an issue detractors state - a low grade ore. The standard presentation is 50.6Mt of proven and probable reserves @ 10.3% (with an incredibly low strip ratio of 0.36:1). I found some figures for GEMCO and they were a strip ratio of 3:1 in 2015 and its was going up every year. The last presented figure was 5.4:1 in 2020. GEMCO however have an infrastructure in place to do this overburden removal efficently. Do people excessively worry about this strip ratio if costs remain under control? - No. This presentation with a low strip ratio and low grade does E25 no favours because new potential investors focus on the low grade and not the very low low strip ratio (at least until there is a reliable P&L).
Is there an alternative? - Yes. What E25 is basically doing is using the log washer to perform the function often done by a digger - removing the dirt around the ore. Lets see what the numbers would look like if the log washer was considerred an over-burden mining tool. E25 have advised, but not frequently publicised the ore coming out of the log washer is about 27.3% (page 14 of the DFS). If the clay removed by the log washer was over-burden, the strip ratio would climb to a still acceptable 2.6:1. The proven and probable resource description would change to 19.1Mt @ 27.3% and the 263Mt would drop to around 100Mt. Its less volume but volume hasn't been E25's problem. I suspect few would query the grade as too low.
E25 would now be talking about removing 800kt+ of overburden each year and in some years 1Mt+. The ore mined would be around 500Kt/yr (but at 27% not 10%). This ore would then go through a beneficication process yielding year 1-5 volumes of 366kt @ 33%.
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