Gold, gold, gold, gold for next week

Hat-tip to the late Norman "Nugget" May.

Seems to me that this next week, the last week of July, could be one of far more substance to Ramelius and its tragics than the average plod of late.

As noted in the recent presentation:


Both the Eridanus and Edna May Stage 3 reports were due at the end of June and in the presentation of 15 July the company did not advise of any delays for either of those reports. So, it seems likely to me, the probable timing for ASX announcements this coming week is the scoping study for the Eridanus underground and the pre-feasibility study for Edna May Stage 3 reports will come in the earlier part of the week and the updated mine plan and the quarterly will round out the week.

Despite some operational problems I suspect the quarterly will be yet another solid one. And, as suggested by others here, there is some reason to suspect that the to-be-released mine plan will show material growth over last year's plan (which was itself 34% more than the one from 2019). And all the indications so far are that both Eridanus and Edna May are opportunities for the company to grow even more. So I'm hoping all four reports to deliver the gold (figuratively and literally).

Something else that I've been musing about.

How is Ramelius going to process all of this additional ore any time soon. My understanding is that both the Checkers and Edna May mills are already going at full tilt. The analysis to increase the Checkers mill capacity, from 2.0mtpa to 2.5 - 2.7mtpa is not due until the end of December. But we already know from previous work that Ramelius has done that the cost is in the ballpark of $30m for say 600ktpa extra processing capacity, which works out to be $5m per 100ktpa processing. That does sound relatively expensive to me, comparatively speaking. What does it cost to build a brand new 2.5mtpa mill? $120m? And that is including all the infrastructure and sundries needed for a stand-alone plant.

And then there are the time it would take to deliver extra processing capacity: there is the delay while they crunch the numbers, another 5 months, and then there will be an extended delay for construction and commissioning. I suspect that we are at least 12 months away from seeing any increased production from an expanded Checkers mill. So what will the time and cost in expanding Checkers deliver to the company? If they put the same grade of ore through the Checkers extension as is already going through that mill then that extra 600ktpa of processing would boost production from about 161k oz a year to about 210k oz pa. 50k oz pa. Is that enough to be a step change in growth? Probably not. I think when Mark Zeptner talks about step-change growth he is thinking more along the lines of a production increase of at least 100k oz pa.

So once again I come back to preferring that they buy more processing capacity rather than build more processing capacity. I see during the last week that Northern Star offloaded to Evolution some tenements that are adjacent to an existing Evolution project and that Evolution is in the process of offloading a Qld project (that I think is smallish and in care and maintenance). No scraps there for Ramelius.