Delay to Production and Production Timeframe.
It's clear after reading yesterday's posts that this is a major bugbear to some holders, and an opportunity for a couple of TLG trolls to poke a stick at us.
It was stressed several times that the delay as a result of coming upon voids in old adits and workings will have ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on the short or long term progress of the company.
Any effect on the share price will be very short term.
Whether the graphite being currently used to market to potential customers and develop graphene production comes out of FGR's mine,or very similar ore from a few km's up the road is not really of much importance in the scheme of things.
FGR is being recognised world-wide as a TECH COMPANY that has made a breakthrough in the production of low cost, high purity graphene at a time when many, many potential users are seeking this.
It is certainly a positive that FGR will control the whole value chain from mine to end user, and have a key holding of ground that ensures a dominant position when there is a limited resource.
FGR has accessed very similar material from the government mine (not Elcora, or Bogala, or RS Mines).
This in itself can be viewed as a positive, as it leads to a closer relationship between FGR and the SL government.
There is already a further shipment in progress, to ensure that FGR can meet the strong interest from a range of end users.
Craig McGuckin stressed that the company is looking at " decades of production", and it is far, far more important to set up safe practices, processes, and mining methods at this crucial stage.
To the end user, the name of the SL mine the material came from is not important at this stage - they are focussed on the end result.
Far more important, to the company, to the SL authorities, to the local people, and to the end user that FGR is seen as a reliable supplier that truly cares about it's workers, the environment, and the quality of it's product.
It is much more beneficial to the company's shareholders (you and me), in the long term than taking risks and short cuts just to be able to say "our mine is in production".
Much more important to be able to show customers the breakthrough of the low cost end product, and continue development of this product.
And when will our own mine be in production?
In terms of updating the shaft progress;
At Aluketiya, shaft H (this is the shaft in the area where three significant veins, including the monster 1.7m one are defined) currently has just 6m to go.
Shaft J has a further 15m to reach the bedrock target.
At Pandeniya (where the voids resulting from old artisanal workings were encountered) the mining team is making good progress to sink the shaft to a safe level below the old workings. They expect to have this complete in about two weeks.
There is no target date - when it is done it is done. But it's not far away.
The number of employees in SL now numbers 60,who work in mining teams of 7, and progress on improving performance and attitude to safe working methods is constantly improving.
Craig commented that historically, mining methods were often unsafe, and it has taken 9 months of training to improve this to a good level.
The shareholders in the meeting were very happy to hear these answers, and no concerns were raised. While the current share price might be affected in the short term, the potential customers of FGR product have no concerns.
As was stressed by the directors, the long term result in placing worker safely at the top of the priority list will be beneficial to all long tern shareholders.
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