The Company Update from 20th March states "The Company will now pursue the next stage of development planning towards a direct shipping of ore mine operation." That spells it out that the company is pursuing DSO.
The footnotes of Axiom's Drill Results 6/3/17 notes 1.2% cut-off grades for limonite and saprolite intersections. Cut-Off Grade being what Axiom believe to be the lowest grade of material considered economic.... however, A report published on Axiom's website from Sept 2015 noted "AVQ’s business model is to mine and ship nickel ore in two product categories:
1. A DSO 1.8% Ni Direct Shipping Ore (DSO) product.
2. A lower grade 1.5% Ni DSO product."
Entire Intersection Drill Holes from San Jorge that returned above 1.5%? Zero.
Q: So are Axiom likely to ship a 1% Ni DSO from Solomon Islands?
A: Shipping a lower-than-cut-off-grade bulk commodity DSO roughly 4x further than Phillipines DSO makes the Axiom MD's remuneration sound like a high return investment!
The extra-grainy map (intentional, perhaps?) on page 6 of the drill results 6/3/17 shows 50m drill spacings? with the highlighted results being approx 250m x 200m (northwest area) and 1x <50m wide strip (eastern area) with 1x drill hole of 18m depth... not sure if it was the east or west side. Either way, that really only sounds like 2 - 3 months mining with a small mining fleet....?
Anyways, to balance out my dislike of low grade DSO, here's a link to an article that appears to be 18 months old I came across when trying to find comparison DSO Nickel operations. It talks about DSO grades.
http://www.amegroup.com/Website/FeatureArticleDetail.aspx?faId=166
Happy Spending
