Sugar Zone, page-9

Back scratching that itch that is the Sugar Zone ... I've heard of slow news days but regarding SZ it's been a slow news half-year.

So what do we know?

On 31 July the company announced it was "idling" the plant and mine so they could fix up some infrastructure and do some drilling. $35m all up to be spent in FY24 including $28m on 93km of drilling including three exploration drives.

On 27 September through gritted teeth the company updated the drilling campaign was underway, with 2 of the 3 drives complete, and with 2 rigs working underground and one on surface. They stated the FY24 drilling is "predominantly" for grade control of near-term production. They offered up this schematic:


On 26 October - the Q1FY24 quarterly - reported that the "3 dedicated exploration drives completed with 4 drill rigs actively executingthe 93,000m FY24 Sugar Zone drill program". There were 2 rigs underground and 2 on surface and a third underground rig was to kick in early in the December quarter. Notice the change in the schematic from the one posted above from late September: it would seem the FY24 exploration target drilling part of the campaign seems to have been completed.


In their presentation of 24 November they used the same schematic they used in October but provided a bit more detail in the description (even with a typo: the three drives were completed in H1FY24 not H1FY23).

At slide 16 of the presentation they give an overview of what and why they are drilling at SZ (too much detail to snip onto here). Comprehensive without providing any actual outcomes from their drilling campaign.

And that's as much as the company has divulged. FA about SZ, really. No news is good news is a saying that never ever applies to listed mining companies. Doesn't mean that it has to be bad news though (I keep telling myself). I suppose there is good news in that the share price has somewhat recovered even without any direction regarding Sugar Zone.

Maybe the next quarterly, due by the end of January, will have something of substance to say about SZ.