Quarts has some good grade there. But there's a question of how...

Quarts has some good grade there. But there's a question of how much stripping will be necessary, and whether it'll be enough on its own, or require lower grade ore to be mixed in from say A-East.

Management gave an estimate of grade going forward (life of mine presentation or similar, some time back) - 0.8g/t, I think. I think it's mainly a question of much time is needed for stripping and having enough mining equipment at Quarts to fill 7mtpa without the use of stockpiles.

I wonder if Quarts has enough space for that much equipment, or if we need one of the A pits to be dewatered to make more space, before we can mine 7mtpa. Eg. having to pause mining while blasting is going on, if the space is small.


At some point, the plan would have to change - in 5 years, when we've dug up a fair bit of the reserves, we'd have to be considering re-opening pits, opening new pits, or going underground. But we've been given a projection for however many years it was - 8 or so.


A MRE update would help to visualise things a bit better, but we already have medium term projections. It's only the short and long term projections that are more in the dark.


NE - an updated MRE and PFS may being some excitement back, if having a strong NPV. But then we'd have to consider political risk again.