SJB well said - "The hold up hasn't been the mining, it has been processing, and we now have both 25 tph Big Harry and also 50 tph Big Bertha onsite and ready to go. Big Bertha has been equipped with a mobile diesel power-plant to be portable to assist with reprocessing the previous tailing that the evidence shows has considerable gold. This is all about logistics in that the tailings obviously don't need crushing, so there is no need to put pressure on the rock crushing part of the process mill. The tailings only need to be pulverised into powder and put straight in to the gravity plant, bypassing the crusher and thus increasing the feed rate. Who knows, maybe we will have a portable crusher/s at Antenna and eventually move Bertha down there too. This means that any ore will become much more dense if it needs to be transported, as well as not damaging the trucks with large rocks."
Especially the idea of putting a hammer mill at Antenna to reduce trucking wear and tear, diesal costs etc. I think they are going full bore with the pit restarts at Sertao and Antenna as this is how they achieve the ultimate value for the company.
Re your comments on the mining, I agree, the problems to date haven't been the mining, its been the plant, but once the plant issues have been ironed out, all eyes will return to the mining. How much high grade ore can they bring to the surface per day? It might well be that Cascavel will live up to expectations in terms of grade, but will disappoint with throughput. That's where Sertao and Antenna step in with high grade open pit resources delivering high volume ore to the mill, thereby achieving well beyond the aspirational total of 5000oz per quarter.
Expand
