Ok, so it appears:They didn't manage to deliver the updated plan...

Ok, so it appears:

• They didn't manage to deliver the updated plan to Sprott by end of January, so now it's at Sprott's option to terminate the finance. Or Sprott can just wait till they fail to make the August deadline then collect their $US10M break fee.
• Now all 'civil works' have stopped on the site, not just 'non-essential'. Staff made redundant. So construction is now fully on hold. Who knows what is happening with the villagers!
• The cost-saving plan with the wharf didn't work.

I actually thought they would have been able to quantify the increase and would have announced a capital raise... but no. They must be really struggling to sort something out with GRES.

It seems likely that the chosen 'strategic option' will be to:

1. break with Sprott
2. drill like mad
3. upscale the project
4. new DFS
5. try to get new finance off the back of that

So likely no gold till 2024.

The root cause of all this horror from what I can tell is management's delay in getting the EPC contract nailed down. If they had done that, they presumably would have been in a better position to quantify the cost increase.

On the positive side, it does look like they have finished grade control drilling and have now moved on to exploration like they planned.