Let's talk about the safe zone. $790/dmt production costs. PLS recently divulged some $737A/dmt but lets not forget they have far more overheads and also are adding cost during their P680 upgrade which they will see relief from in their next quarterly. Can we do it at NAL? Of course we can. But for now, lets target Goldman's bullshit $800US/t target.<br><br>Mining ops. First thing is first. Yes, we have contracted Fournier and Fils to carry out our pit to R.O.M requirements. Now while those costs are somewhat capped to the agreement, that does not stop unplanned outages and downtime which does affect the stockpile levels, but not the feed into the plant. It will however reduce the time in which the contractor has to clear haul roads and strip in preparation for bringing NAL's (let's all pretend its going to be much improved) next lot of higher grade deposits to the plant. There may be liquidated damages but we know that if there were liquidated damages that those damages are never of a value to offset the cost of loss of production.<br><br>Blasting: dont ever let you blasting contractor carry out a cost cutting exercise. By the time pegmatite is in an excavator bucket or face shovel, it is a somewhat heavy state of 2.3 - 2.7SG.Just for comparison - The once "painful" ore of Aussie Nickel mines is a 1.9SG to 2.0SG and Iron Ore is a meek 1.7-1.8SG. A local gold mine adjacent to Perth with what is globally known as some of the toughest mining conditions on the planet is a 2.03SG ore body. If you are not near an airport, you pack those drill holes and send it. The difference between a low quality blast profile against a good one is some what like the difference between breaking a stubby into 10 piece of glass and scraping it down your face by the handful, or grabbing the same stubby crushed into 1000 pieces of glass and scratching it down your face. Lots of little inferior cuts as opposed to massive gashes. That's how your mining equipment will respond to your blast profile. Also your crusher later on in the process.My suspicion is that by installing a new "pre-crusher" is that we are combatting a rather unfriendly blast profile. None the less installing one is not a waste because if the blast profile is optimised, the pre-crushing will still greatly assist the primary crusher with higher and more efficient output.Australian miners are just coming to the party with the new beast Lithium peg. Currently by applying heavy liner applications to existing machinery with the current specifications that are of a considerable bulk and coverage to reduce wear and increase life suitable for the lithium pegmatite, the weight of the attachments are becoming far too great to remain within buckets rated suspended loads or dump truck's GVM. So (and this where my day-to-day job comes into play) the mining fraternity is moving towards liner-less solutions that just require the attachments to be changed out at a more frequent pace, with less downtime for each change out. This will assist in increased flow to the R.O.M pad, and also less downtime for maintenance and less unplanned downtime for liner and parent metal repairs. For those who might not understand, these are initiatives that are the difference between, let's say an excavator bucket filling a dump truck tray in 3 scoops instead of 4 and a dump truck carrying 4 scoops instead of 3...<br>These are initiatives are something that NAL can utilise if they aren't already (my suspicion is not). <br><br>Next is the crushing and concentration circuit. The crushing and concentration circuits need to operate independently The concentrator will not ever keep up with a full piss crushing circuit. If we haven't already, we need to ensure we have diverter chutes installed to maintain the crushing output. So basically what we should be doing, is continuing to crush and pile the concentrator feedstock to ensure the concentrator is always fed. This is 101 stuff... i would expect this to be already done, however i've not heard of the concentrator feedstock at all. My suspicion being an old existing concentrator plan that this might not be in the existing footprint. The concentrator uses a cloth filter that requires changing out every 15 minutes or so. This is an archaic method that is likely to have been rendered or is being rendered obsolete by the leading producers. This turns existing filter presses into filter belt which requires less changing out and also lasts twice as long.As far as i'm concerned there is plenty or fruit there to get that recovery rate at NAL to 70% and those production costs below $1000AUD/dmt. Then there are the sales initiatives.<br>But i cant be fkt typing that now. Jumping in the pool. its bloody hot.
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