The only purpose of this thread is to gain an understanding on any operational issues and challenges for ORE arising from off-spec output.
Is his statement valid?
You won't find the answer to that here because, in truth, apart from company insiders none of us
know. We can make informed guesses, but that is probably not what you are looking for.
Joe started this line back when there was definitely "off spec" product being sold and he would no doubt have seen evidence of it in the market. Maybe he saw a few bags during a plant visit in China. Maybe someone bragged over a dinner. Whatever... he does like to "put down" and he does like to appear to know something we don't. Does he know how many off spec tons were sold? Does he know when it was made? Does he know its assay? Does he know which market it was sold in to prior to allegedly being reprocessed? The key word here is know - I'm picking the answer to all of the above is no.
We know it was in the market because ORE told us. They told us it was being recovered from tanks in the process and was "saleable". We have been told that the "in process" material is no longer being produced - those particular issues have been fixed - "
In addition, changes to carbon dioxide injection points and diffusor design modification have resulted in the elimination of “in process” material and the achievement of more stable operating conditions throughout the circuit." (refer last quarterly)
We know it was in the market because we could see the evidence of it in the customs data (specifically identified as "in proc"). Some will make guesses that other low price shipments are off spec (or favours to TTC's friends?) but these often turn out to have same selling price as shipments to same destination from earlier in the year and thus may well be fulfilling older contracts.
And then there was the
Las Vegas presentation which showed 86% of samples taken from the previous week meeting battery grade (typical spec 99.9%) and with the "fails" in to technical grade due to Na and Mg. The critics would immediately say, yes but what about the volume in that week? (in many chemical processes, slower production rates will output better purities). We don't know. Equally, we could ask whether they were aiming to make all battery grade that week. We don't know.
And then there is the little matter of grades and specs.
What are they defining as the specification for each grade? There is no industry standard. All the suppliers quote slightly different specifications, and no doubt the customers have different requirements as well.
Plenty of questions. Plenty of opportunity to sow seeds of doubt.
If so, is ORE actively addressing and resolving the issue?
Beyond achieving nameplate, their stated priority for optimisation is cost - quality is not mentioned, perhaps suggesting they don't see an issue with quality.
"Now production from the plant is nearing nameplate capacity, the focus will turn to operational optimisation. This will see a renewed focus on reagent usage, operational process and recovery to achieve improvements in the cost of production."
(refer
annual report p17)
