Not so sure the market understood the ann, to me it was deliberately presented in a fashion that was confusing. The Tomra figures of 792.4g/t, 188.8g/t, 92.1g/tonne, 377.8g/t certainly are impressive...thats the same order of magnitude of the drill results Kirkland Lake reported in their last ann.
Difference being Novo was reporting concentrate, Kirkland Lake the actual drill intercepts. Huge difference the market may not have understood.
So what do the Tomra results mean? Well not much really, as we are advised that the 5 tonne samples are too small to be representative. But for the sake of argument, lets make an invalid assumption and pretend they are representative a do some math.
The samples were crushed and sieved to get material of a size suited to Tomra processing, giving 3 seperate piles of ore.
1) >63mm size...lets call that pile "rocks"
2) 6mm-63mm size...lets call that pile "stones"
3) <6mm size...lets call that pile "sand"
Only the "stones" were put through the Tomra.
Lets look at sample KX234. It returned the most gold.
Total sample size 5.6106 tonnes, of which 67.8% is "stones" =3.804 tonnes.
Tomra gave a concentrate of 13.5 kg which assayed at 792.4g/tonne.
So lets worknout how much gold was in the 15.5 sample.
(13.5/1000) X 792.4 = 10.7grams.
So 3.804 tonnes of "stones" contained 10.7g of gold. How many g/tonne is that?
10.7g/3.804tonnes =2.81g/tonne.
For the sake of simplicity we will assume the sample sizes are the same weight to give an average of 1.33g/tonne.
Thats carefully selected ore too. In a mining operation the ore will probably be much lower grade. Eg All material say 0.8m below a tuff marker, or say 1.5m above the basement plus say 0.5m of basement goes into the "ore" pile for crushing and processing.
Of course we dont know how much gold the Tomra misses. Nor do we know if this weathered conglomerate crushes at random so that the "rocks" and "sand" are similar in gold content to the "stones". Nor do we know just how unweathered conglomerate crushes, or how different crushing methods might increase the % of " stones". Perhaps Novo might think about finding out the answers to the last couple of unknowns one day....they will be important if the Tomra has a future role.
EGINA
Not really relevent to KAI but of interest.
First thing that struck me was that 37% of the gold found was in a single large nugget. Only one in a 152 tonne bulk sample. That makes me question whether this sample size is actually large enough to be used in a future sampling program to produce meaningful results.
Secondly we know the sample was taken from a gravel bed between 1 and 3 metres down. We know the top surface is pretty level, the variation MIGHT mean Novo dug up gravel from a buried watercourse. That would make sense, we know the sample was taken from near where the previous owners were working. They were not stupid, they found a rich area to work.
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