The 20koz is what they say they recovered from 78 ktonnes of ore (pretty much the total of earlier processed ore and current 50k tonne stockpile).
Given they'd already processed and sold 12koz from the earlier production this means they've only managed to get about 8koz from the current 50ktonne ore processing. This also matches the average head grades (5.5g/t or so) they mentioned in the september quarterly for current processing.
So they didn't get as much gold as was expected from the final 50k tonnes of ore by the looks of it. This is dissappointing, but its also dissappointing the way they've sort of buried the fact rather than just stating ... the remaining 50ktonnes of ore was processed at an average head grade of xxx to retrieve yyy oz's of gold.
The more this goes on the more this management seems deliberately misleading. I don't trust anything about koongie at the moment either now - I'm sure its quite zinc price sensitive and zinc prices are low. Also they keep stating the 4.5 million tonne resource figure but the reality is that includes oxide ore (not likely to ever be processed), transition ore (questionable whether it will be processed) and then the sulphide ore (less than half the current resource).
Surely they could have at least done a mine plan and provided a rough ore reserve estimate by now. There's also no desktop figures etc. showing what zinc pricing they've used in their models etc.
If you look at the Dec 06 quarterly they said they expected metallurgy to take a few weeks. How did it go from that to a year. In the march 07 quarter they said it would be completed the next two quarters. In the June 07 quarter they said the same. In the Sept quarter they said they had a definite direction for it etc. In none of this have they provided any more than minimal information about whats actually been occurring with the processing.
Other companies that do metallurgy provide all sorts of detail about the processing characteristics. If they plan drilling they inform where, when and how much. If they have completed some drilling they show where it was done, provide hole locations and grades in tabular form and often as maps as well etc. etc.
Not trying to be deliberately difficult just calling it as I see it.
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