@LongTony "I was warned years ago that this was a much more difficult operation than was being communicated to the market and that the team would face the consequences."... interesting, can you provide any colour on specific predicted difficulties? Just read your replies to others before hitting post, so this post is more putting my thoughts down. I never 'liked' the project because of the low grade and required high throughput and recoveries, but technology improves, mining always gets bigger in scale, and @VinceS2 literally builds DMU's for a living so when he says it can be done it can be done. Put's your contact's warning more in the realm of 'don't like the project' rather than knowledge 'it will be much more difficult' imo. Still a very straight forward deposit and process...
The features ore min sand ore that typically cause trouble are.
slimes(clay) level and type. The problems-cost dealing with high clay is self-explanatory. Some clays are hydrophobic, don't easily dissolve, play sticky and make washing the sand for high HM recoveries in the wet plant difficult. Coburn has very low slimes and is supposed to be very free-flowing.
mineral size.. very fine grains make recovery more difficult, to separate slimes and separate heavy minerals from lighter sand on account smaller minerals have less gravity 'potential' per grain verses water-tension and entrainment effects. Coburn has large grain size, D50 size 125-148 micron for VHM minerals.
induration (cementing of sands). Typically oversize levels in the MRE is a good indication of induration levels. Drill bit breaks up indurated sand into chunky cemented grain aggregates (ie oversized). Some cementation is more problematic than others, Coburn has calcrete layers where CaCO3 is the cementing material. Coburn MRE has low 3% oversize levels, and the dozer mining unit is fitted with screens that should remove it without issue I would think. Too much over-size might lock up HM reducing recovery to product, but at these levels I can't see it responsible for poor production volume.
Water level.. possible a high water table with high water inflow to pit can cause trouble operating in-pit equipment. Given the location and dunal style deposit I wouldn;t have thought water levels would be a problem. Shaws mentioned water mounding issues (elevated water level) which is a simple fix with more sump pumps I would have thought.
Possible that very high assumed mining rates and mineral recoveries are unattainable, but exaggeration and optimistic assumptions don't equal "difficult operation", more like "exaggerated performance". Haven't read the report, but Shaw's list of issues preventing nameplate production and they are mostly mechanical, electrical, design. The entire Coburn mine design, process and plant is very well understood and stock standard over decades of min sand mining. The deposit is low slime and oversize with good grain size.
• Availability of the dozer mining units due to a range of electrical and mechanical failures. • Reliability of the power infrastructure which caused a number of power outages. • Issues with pump mechanical seals in the Wet Concentration Plant (WCP). • The transition to in-pit disposal of sand tailings (from the off-path storage facility) has impacted mining activities due to capacity constraints caused by increased water mounding within the pit and additional infrastructure being required. • Slower than expected commissioning and operation of the MSP.
Issues such as exaggerated performance or underestimated costs are par for the course, but STA are not talking about a few percent slippage on various metrics. Issues seems to have been major/minor on-going failure of the plant as built/delivered. Nothing related to the mineral deposit that I can see would "make it a much more difficult operation than was being communicated to the market". Major or minor failure of the plant as built/delivered is always a risk, but I can't see how anyone can know in advance the plant won;t work properly before it's been built? Worries about pushing very high tonnage through unusually large DMU's is a risk until demonstrated, but again we are back to design/build/implementation risk not inherent difficulty.
It seems multiple poorly designed/built pieces of equipment/plant keep failing, each failure or issue contributing to never getting close to wet plant nameplate. Poor design-build-installation all probably playing a part, poor operator skills/experience compounding the situation. What is surprising to me is how long they stayed stuck at 50-60%, and now guidance it will take another 6-9 months to sort out.
Shocking to me is that $50M growth-CR last year isn;t enough headroom when all capex contracts were " completed and paid out" March Qtr. 50-60% nameplate is producing ~$60M HMC sales first half CY23 HMC revenue. Pro-rata that's $120Mpa when opex + royalties was $90Mpa in DFS. Assuming a 30% lift in opex for inflation and DFS BS too low cost assumptions, and it still shouldn't be bleeding cash so badly they need $30M top-up now. Unless plant remediation has been and will continue to be very expensive, and the time to lift production to nameplate was seriously downplayed (one assumes both are true). It's the CR that really blindsided me, nothing Luke said 10 July, Noosa or Shaw's recent report suggested negative cashflow issues of that magnitude with "75% nameplate production shortly then 100% by end of the year".
Great chance for Shaws and Morgans 43c CR clients to average down in the teens this CR, but dilution at these prices is a killer. Wouldn't surprise me they raise at 18c (20% discount to last close), which is 167M extra shares. Best light I can make of it is he raised $50M at 43c for 116M shares ("for growth"... genius move), so averaged out Luke stitched up the market for $80M @ 28c average to cover higher costs and f-ups... not so bad after all lol. Could be a lot worse... imagine going into 2023 ramp-up troubles on just the original funding package for development
GLTAH
STA Price at posting:
22.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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