Telfer the Elephant in the Room, page-13

Tom,

NCM has obviously not stated closure of Telfer and won't do that until all other options are exhausted. Their problem is to get sufficient quantities of ore to feed a plant that needs 11 million tons of ore for each of the two trains.

I imagine that if they can get at least 11m tap, they could downsize to one train.
Those with more knowledge of plant design may be able to comment if it is practical and economically feasible to downsize a train to process a smaller quantity of ore economically and economically maintain an operation with fewer employees but retaining exist in unused infrastructure on a C&M basis.

Havieron has plenty of gold but extraction volume is limited due to almost all being deep underground. That's why they are estimating just 3mtpa from Havieron. Another 3 from Antipa would only fill had a train.

Can they find gold at WILKI? Would it be enough to extract another 5-6mtpa? How long will that take? Lots of questions. Not enough info to decide on the future of the Telfer plant.

They were working on expanding the existing Telfer open pit to keep the volume up but I haven't seen any progress reports on the feasibility of doing that nor if any progress was being made on that option.

Exploration at WILKI, adjacent to Telfer ground, has not really started yet as they are waiting for native title clearances according to Sept quarterly.