Not ridiculous at all, it does take work, money and time until you get actual Ore Reserve Numbers from the remaining Pits.
- They need to be drilled out both extension and in-fill and then complete assay sampling;
- Based on these results a Geo then plugs all into a Block Model and works out the JORC Mineral Resource
- You then need to complete your baseline Environmental, Heritage, Hydro surveys etc. to see what is actually there and understand the various factors
- A mining engineer then reviews the various data and inputs together, He or She then designs the most appropriate pit design
- This is then plugged into a basic feasibility study and you end up with Ore Reserves for what is economical to extract
This whole process doesn't happen overnight and can be anywhere between 18-36 months depending on a range of factors. Carriere De L'este already has holes drilled into it at large spacing, the drilling program for CDL would likely contain in-fill drilling to narrow the distance between holes to reach a Mineral Resource that is JORC compliant quicker than the other Pits without any drilling at this stage.
One Cool thing I posted a while back (and others before me) was an overview of the full Manono Area, freely available on Google Maps.
1) Just punch in AVZ Minerals into Google and you will see the below
2) Change the layer to Terrain to get a better overview
3) Zoom out to get a better appreciation of the entire area
4) Using any overlay and lining up with Lake Likushi & the old flooded Tin Pits
5) Full overview of Manono
When I provided details about the difference between a Mineral Resource vs Ore Reserves, there is literally 100's of factors that an engineer and the company needs to determine when designing a mining pit. Using AVZ as the example Roche Dure is simple and is out of the way of existing infrastructure / roads / the town.
The 1.5B resource target is what the company hopes to eventually be able to drill out at Manono to become HOPEFULLY a 1.5B Mineral Resource. How much of that ends up within Pit Designs / Feasibility and Ore Reserves depends on numerous factors that the company can work through in due time. Just from the picture above you can see that Mpete & Tempete Pits are within 100M of residential / agricultural housing. Carriere De L'este which you can view for yourself in Google will need to work around water management of Lake Likushi just as 2 factors (when literally an engineer or the company itself deals with 100 different considerations) to come up with the final design.
One other point I'd make is a certain Lithium Company in the Czech Republic (most should be able to work out who), hey have a Massive Mineral Resource, but the main deposit is some 600M underground, their actual Ore Reserve as a result only plans to mine less than 10% of the Mineral Resource, which is quiet common in underground mining.
