Xerof, Apologies for the delay. I had to give this question some thought.
I didn't know of WP before he joined Avanco: his area of operations (South America etc has been different to mine (mostly Australasia and Asia). At first I was concerned his skills and experience were too similar to ATPs and wondered if there was a reason for the apparent duplication, especially at Board level. I even wondered if there was a connection between this appointment and ATPs absence at the AGM which has still not been explained satisfactorily. On looking into WPs pedigree it seems he has a lot more BIOX experience than ATP and it could be he's been brought in for that reason.
Bio-Oxidation of sulphide minerals is a very cost effective way (in tropical/subtropical climates) of rendering insoluble metallic sulphides soluble. This would be important if it was intended to go down the SX-EW route to produce copper cathode metal (about three 9s purity) on site rather than to simply produce copper sulphide concentrates for shipment to a smelter.
Why would they do this? Depending on the location of the smelter the cost of shipping together with the level of smelter charges (~$250 per ton of cons smelted) may render the traditional smelting route unviable. Generating copper cathode on site results in lower freight charges and no smelting charges (though refining would be necessary at some point either way)
I wouldn't think this level of processing sophistication would be either necessary or viable for Stage 1, however, I appreciate the practicality of it and can very well imagine it as a credible process route option for Stage 2 which, due to the lower RoM grades anticipated at Pedro Branca, would be a far larger plant (350-500tph.. (possibly larger). When building larger plants it's a lot easier to factor in those additional process units at the outset.
PP.. I wouldn't expect the Stage 1 plant to be the Total Process Station alluded to at the AGM. According to the latest Qtrly they only envisage initial throughput to be of the order of 50-60tph. You couldn't readily upgrade that in modular fashion to, say, 500tph too easily (if at all). It would be like trying to upgrade a Mini to a 30 ton truck... You don't keep any of the mini, you simply toss it and buy a truck. You might use the Mini to drive to the truck yard but that would be about it. Similar with likely progression from Stage 1 to Stage 2. Depending on the distances between the deposits the plant locations would probably be entirely different. The Stage 1 plant would then be decommissioned when AN/S are exhausted and moved elsewhere or sold..
Going on this scenario, it should be possible to get a 50-60tph Stage 1 project up and running within 15-18 months (from a scratch start) with ~$30-35m capital: possibly less in Brazil.
Going back to WP and ATP: I had hoped for and would have expected for ATP to lead the design, plant acquisition, construction and, commissioning for the Stage 1 plant and then for someone with WPs bigger plant design and construction skills to become involved on Stage 2 design and commission tasks. I still have a slightly uneasy feeling that there still remains a high degree of overlap in their skills considering the stage we're at.
BT
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