Faith in management to deliver exploration discoveries is one investment strategy sure, not one I follow. I'm management agnostic until proven otherwise... bad management can fk up a good project and/or mislead the market, but good management can only do their best and hope to get lucky. Good management cannot change what's in the ground or the market they operate in... You mention CHN hitting a $3.5B peak based on blind faith in Goyder the water walker, despite the low grades of multi-element ore and large probable capex/opex being a difficult hurdle to get over. I and many others posted misgivings a long time before it blew-up, turns out great management can't overcome economic reality of the geological hand they're dealt...
I would really like to leave management out of this other than to hold them to account for what they say and do. Nearly every project i have a negative opinion on ends up being cast as some personal grudge against management, when nothing could be further from the truth. I haven;t even looked at any management names other than the dude who signs off releases as MD, the project is all about the data and facts far as I'm concerned.
Yes, it was me who said management was promoting infill drilling into reefs that were well known, sampled, drilled and studied before this latest drill campaign. It's my opinion that geologically very continuous and well understood reefs in very large stratified cumulate intrusions have a continuity along strike and at depth that provides good confidence in predicting their location and grade with minimal sampling. Not that there won;t be some variation and some thicker, higher-grade parts of the reefs, but the nature of these titanomagnetites is they are continuous with predictable grades (ignoring numerous faulting and mafic dyke intrusions post deposition).
Grades are predictable within a modest physical, sampling and assaying variation due to the nature of chemical and mineralogical trends in a cooling magma on massive scale. There might be significant variations discovered, but it simply isn't a structural controlled style of alteration mineralisation that can blow-out quickly in thickness/grade, not even the Chonolith style of sulphide accumulation (eg Nebo-Babel) that may form in local traps for a blowout in thickness/grade. That's my thesis and the premise behind a low possibility of these reefs that have been rock-chipped and drilled before turning up much different. Drill new reefs that haven;t been sampled before and there is always a chance of better thicker/grade...
"a preliminary release re the met work from EK would/could have a similar effect re the vanadium, titanium, separation issues etc."... I expect the ilmenite to recover well to a sweet <50% slag-feed concentrate based on some papers I read on the reefs. Image b) below shows very granular Ilmenite and Magnetite grains with nice coarse size for recovery and sale. Lock it in Eddy... The PGE's have been found in in the very, very fine 5 micron size from the paper I referenced earlier... that is not conducive to good recoveries to a saleable con. The very low sulphide content to CU ratio, and mineralogy I've read suggests good recovery of Cu to con. Lock that in also Eddy.
So now we are back to where I finished the other day, contemplating how these individual recovered concentrates from fairly simple magnetite and float processes can be monetised? In isolation there is value in all the magnetitie reef elements, including Fe which is a valuable biproduct of both Ilmneite slag production and can be valuable from Vanadium flake production. So yes, I agree the team will continue to hit similar thickness/grade in fresh rock along strike, and report 'Exceptional Metalurgical Recovery Work' bla, bla. I'm thinking out to the end game, which might seem premature to some but the sooner the better in my experience...
GLTAH
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