Great announcement, Results exceeding the expectations from the initial trial runs. The previous XRT trial update had 85% recovery and a 10 times upgrade. EQR said they expected to achieve 90%+ recoveries in the future. The announced 25x upgrade of this previous waste is huge. By my calculations a 25x uplift results in 96%+ removal of mass. 100 tonnes goes in less than 4 comes out.
If this x25 uplift is indicative of all the Saloro ores XRT sorting potential it would be an understatement to say that XRT sorting is a game changer for Saloro.
It was also stated in the previous ann:
“Once commissioning is complete, Saloro will look at purchasing additional XRT Ore Sorters and expand capacity to enable the bulk of the ore mined from the Barruecopardo open pit to be processed by ore sorting.
This will have a positive impact on costs, as the processing plant will treat approximately 1/3 of the current ore tonnes, but at a much higher grade. Recoveries in the processing plant will also improve as head grade to the plant increases “
In the Market Bull podcast Kevin said regarding Saloro “One of the issues is with scheelite in particular it breaks very small every time you touch it so the beauty of the ore sorting is you can keep it up at 30/40mm size range and take it out then very gently crush that product downstream”
If recovery rates are 55% then these extra high grade tones of sorter concentrate referenced in this ann are adding around an average of ½ a ton of concentrate a day to production. Nothing huge but given it was mined and crushed then going to waste and now is instead being fed in as high grade ore, which should increase the plant recovery rates, it should more than pull its wait in lowering costs per MTU.
(20min delay)