Well, I partially disagree. A lot of what I do in postmortems is...

Well, I partially disagree. A lot of what I do in postmortems is look at wot I reckon be de key component, which be mill throughput - wot be the throughput dat dis Resource can sustain? At realistic costs and recoveries, not to mention dilution. Not many mining outfits do this analysis, kiddies and hence a whole pile crash and burn. 2Mtpa keeps the MD and analysts happy ‘cos dey recon it be low unit cost. Wrong question. Warrawoona probably would have flown with a competent MRE (not de oldest number crunching bloke on de block, but someone wot does both geology and numbers) feeding into a convergence analysis wit appropriately scaled costs and recoveries. 1Mtpa? Grav and pressure leach? Vat leach? Dunno. De work were never done. The ol’ School of Mines “build de biggest CIP plant ya can and she’ll be right” mentality shines through . . .