HI Pastimer. mate as you seem to know a fair bit about the...

HI Pastimer.

mate as you seem to know a fair bit about the minning/ seperation process and are asking some fairly technical questions, I suggest the same as Ans21 that you should email direct to Brendan Borg our MD. He is very approachable. The issues you ask about are currently being analysed and configured exactly right now for the upcomming scoping study in about a month. Therefore we mere HC bloggers may give you wrong information.So I do suggest just drop him an email for the latest state of play.

Certainly so far as you point out the soft sulphur linnaete host material indicates good recoveries of 80 and 88% through simple flotation and low preassure leaching (the exact numbers and details from initial trials have all been announced if you take the time to do your own resreach and look back through the CLA anns) So far from all indications CLA looks like it's gonna have extremenly cheap Opex, ill stick my neck out here and say -at this point it looks like it will be considerably easier and cheaper than COB separation process.(opex).

The initial CLA mining will also be extremely cheap as straight from surface open-pitable, All infrastructure is cheaply and easily available particularly labour. However as you also point out due to the orebody shape and the apparent higher overburden the deeper the open pit minning gets -say moving into about year 3 and onwards looks like it will be more expensive - probably more than COB's-(but Frankly I dont really know the details over there ). This will be compensated for my the cheapness of the processing and seperation metrics and also that all indications are well be producing Co Sulphide Heptahydrate with much added value. Then at a certain depth (currently being determined in SS preps) underground minning will be adopted and for that we are informed by mining engineers that the orebody charecteristics looks to be "perfect" for that.

Im keeping this vague on purpose because I dont want to give you wrong figures as they are still being worked out by the experts right now -therefore you should
1. go and do your own reserach and look at the details in the anouncements out so far
2. contact BB whos on the front line of the process.

Overall IMO (and I like COB also) CLA seems to have a potentially far bigger and far better Co resource than COB and though it may have medium term more expensive mining but i suspect cheaper overall Opex. I like both counters and frankly feel that they along with NZC are some of the very few explorers on ASX who will make it to be succesful miners.

Id buy both if youre not sure!!

Hope this helps -Good luck-