You really have to read the company announcements mate and not...

You really have to read the company announcements mate and not seek reassurance on Hotcopper... However as you love Hotcopper and others may find this useful, enjoy the following summary of the report.

Will Alpha be shelved?

Short answer:

No.

Long Answer:

The current hurdle for the project that we know of is that yields of fresh rock and weathered rock do not perform the same, with weathered rock giving us the sexy yields. As the asset is primarily fresh rock, this isn’t in our favour.

• Test program 4 was delayed to include 4 new samples of this fresh rock. PROCOM is to be releasing these results “shortly”.
• Previously produced bituminous samples are currently with Technix, they are handling the certification and grading of the product.
• HRL have received samples produced by PROCOM, HRL are handling the separation of samples (Oils, asphaltenes and pre-asphaltenes) and providing that to a potential off-take partner for their own analysis.
• SRK are still in the process of updating the MRE from inferred to indicated and measured. They are awaiting the final yield results of test 4.
• Mine Planning has basically been completed, just awaiting the updated MRE. We also have initial CAPEX and OPEX figures. Environmental assessments are progressing in the background.

As you can see it’s far from being shelved. It does suck to see the PFS downgrade to a scoping study, but my interpretation of this is simply due to the fresh rock dilemma. They have majority of the key information required for the project. Genuine off-take interest, Conceptual mine plans, CAPEX, OPEX, Yields (despite them potentially not being favourable) & MRE (Soon to release).

But it would seem that the new MRE figure won’t be as nice as it might have been with weathered rock. As a result, they are to now to build a pilot plant allowing them to conduct testing in house under a wider array of conditions. This being the key item which has messed with the timeframes.

“Due to uncertainties in the process design ramp-uptimetable presented in the draft PFS the Company has elected to downgrade thePFS to a Scoping Study”

The scoping study is just a way of GRV releasing all the other information to market allowing investors to gain a further understanding of its potential without attaching an MRE which they believe they can improve on to a PFS. Despite my assumption of some poor test 4 results, the wording used promotes the idea that the project is still viable despite the fresh rock test 4 results... it’s just not as attractive as it could be.

“This will give the opportunity to demonstrate the financial viability of the project whilst commencing pilot scale work to increase process design confidence levels.”

The pilot plant will take time, no question about it. Once we crack the fresh rock yields it should be as simple as slipping the new yield results into another upgraded MRE for which it can then be inserted into a PFS...