davo - the idea of a mining company commencing operations on a pit WITHOUT knowing the strip ratio is absurd.
The strip ratio is calculated based on the pit design optimised to generate the highest NPV.
The optimal pit design must take into consideration such costs as drill and blast, mining, haulage, grade control, milling and admin costs. These are colectively known as the 'modifying factors' as defined by the JORC (2004) code required to define a 'reserve'.
The presence of overburden means significant costs must be sunk before ore can be accessed and mined. This can be partially mitigated by staging development with a starter pit to access the ore as early as possible followed by a series of cutbacks.
Narrow vein orebody mining is slower and more expensive - in an openpit contractors will charge higher rates. If you refer to page 17 of the Chairman's 2007 AGM address you will see a picture of probably the smallest ecavator I have seen in an openpit mining a vein by a method known as 'keyholing'.
If this is what you're dealing with, you'd be better off importing a crew of little men with shovels IMO.
What TAM needs is Callie-sized deposits - and should be looking for them rather than waste time and shareholder money on these p*ssy little orebodies.
Thankfully it's not my shareholder money.
As Ive said, narrow-vein orebodies are great when they're satellite deposits providing additional high-grade feed, waaaay too risky and costly when it's your main ore source.
Of course, this is what I heard down at the pub and could have got it completly wrong - best you do your own research
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