dreadnought observation

Have been revisiting FML reports and announcements back to 2005 to see what progress has been made and have come across what I term some interesting observations, one of which I am illustrating here.

In progressing from an explorer to a producer one of the keystone resources slated for early production was Dreadnought, primarily because it would be initially an open pit operation, along with some excellent broad mid level grades including 82metres @ 3.53g/t (extending from 75 to 157 below the current pit cut).

A big benefit was that development costs at Dreadnought would be fairly minimal, as it would be a matter of expanding an existing pit.

It would appear that slated 2009 production at Dreadnought never got underway due to there being heritage issues associated with the area.

Appears that these issues have now been resolved and mining has started in one part of the pit (think there are a couple of islands that need knocking out before they can really start to mine it on a large scale basis).

One of the key things about Dreadnought is that the ore body is the same as that found at Perseverance, so there are no blending problems in processing it through the mill.

While average grade being mined is not flash at the current moment (1.9g/t) this will improve as better access and depth is achieved, to say nothing of depth permitting further drilling deeper into Dreadnought.

Need to add that I do not think the ore body is free dig, so costs will be up accordingly.

Big thing from my perspective is that Dreadnought is the key open pit at Coolgardie at the moment.