@plough
For the first time I spent a bit of time reading recent conversations over on Astral Resources threads, including some of your contributions of substance. Good stuff. Seems to be a solid bunch over there. I've not looked at Astral before and I noted there were a couple of posters suggesting that Astral should look at picking up Torque. Understandable seeing their proposed mining project is based on low grade ore and Cristian Moreno has been shooting the lights out with some of the hits at Paris.
I am of the view that getting excited over a low grade prospect is sort of last decade given the number of low grade projects that have fallen over in WA in the last few years. A number of them were at best marginal operations and the cost spike and the smallest of under-performances blew them away. Like you, I am attracted to high grade prospects, such as Paris and Spartan. I also have hopes for Black Cat as well for that same reason. Not sure I would be very keen to trade the few TOR shares I have for shares in a low grade operation like what Astral is proposing. In any case I think the timing is all wrong. My understanding is that Paris is already on mining leases and it should be possible to get it mined fairly quickly. I think Black Cat got its East Kal ore into the Paddington mill within six months of bedding down the tolling agreement. In contrast my guess is that Astral would be at least two or three years from getting any production at the mill they are yet to fund and build.
I read on the Astral threads someone indicate that Gold Fields has capacity to spare at their St Ives operation. Do you know if that is right? If so it should seem relatively simple to toll treat Paris ore at St Ives. It al depends on the mineral resource estimate CM reports for Paris.
A final aside: my impression is that the average drill depth at Astral's main project is quite shallow. You'd think that from Spartan's success every single gold prospector in WA would have to sink at least a few deep holes and yet Astral seems content to say that at their main ore body "Current Resources limited bydepth of drilling – still open atdepth".
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