I have been thinking a bit about the shipping lately. We are sort of stuck in this 1 big quarter, followed by 1 small quarter. This absolutely makes sense because we have a production rate of around 50,000 to 55,000 per quarter and a shipping rate of 30,000 to 35,000 per ship. In order to ship 2 times in 1 quarter you would need to produce 65,000 to 75,000 per quarter. Ideally you would produce a quantity that would yield a whole number when divided by 35,000 ( with a small buffer over) so 35,000, 70,000, 105,000, 140,000 with about 10,000 in reserve inventory.
So my guess is that when the new plant and production is calculated they will focus a bit on a design that allows them to do just this. If the design is for 105,000 per quarter, that would make annual production of 420,000... at 140,000 this would put them at 560,000 ... I am guessing the 560,000 based on the drill results at NAL.
After the merge is completed I suspect we will start hearing more about the final drill results, a re-imagined DFS with new pit design optimized to align production and shipping.
@Whisky49 I think the costs may not be as high as you believe this quarter, because it feels like that when they have a low shipment quarter they use ROM stock and do not have as much cost for the actual mining contract, and in big shipment quarters they rebuild ROM, but with much higher units to spread the cost over they don't have a huge cost increase. It also makes more sense to use the ROM pile during the Jan to March quarter because of the weather.
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