Also worth noting that our thickness like others is mainly limited to auger drilling.
Diamond drilling shows that the clay profile often extends much deeper. Auger drilling can be terminated if they hit something randomly hard or even some transitional.
Auger is cost effective method especially if targetting 10-20m depths. MEI is doing the same so it's just worth noting that the average depths being reported by both companies are largely derived from only the auger drilling.
Both of them have proven the depth extends even deeper in a lot of area with the diamond drilling.
Think of it this way. The auger is cheap pin Pushkin method which gives you a first pass understand of where you Atleast have 10-20m of thickness. The areas still in clay and reporting the better grades and the candidates for a diamond drill hole to test the depth extension in those areas.
Follow up drilling to support a mineral resource or mineral reserve will then consist of more diamond in those deep high grade areas so you can incorporate the full depth and grade into your MRE.
For now it's just heatmapping the area. The grades from VMM are excellent and the depths from the auger excellent. consistent of what's been reported. This was the first drill program basically going in blind. MEI had historicals across tenements so knew where to target their initial diamonds and follow up program much better.
I expect further drilling results from VMM will too see some even higher grade and big depth intercepts now that the augers are painting a good picture across the tenement.
Realistically 9-12months behind IMO.
VMM will have an initial maiden JORC in H1 and some prelim larger scale met work. that's effectively where MEI was in H1 2023 aka, A maiden jorc 400mt and basic met work. they hit a 400m MC in the months following.
So H1 if we have maiden JORC (with upside shown by drills) and basic met work what's a fair MC? Given we are also now massively de-risking our tenements based on the greater understanding MEI has gleaned in their 12 months.
I hold both. also see upside in MEI. But if MEI didn't move much pass a 400-500m mc imho VMM could/should still be 150-250m. a 50-60% discount would seem fair for similar grade, depth, composition and only discounted for 12month of drilling and net work. (again reiterating Mei hit that MC 9-12 months ago anyways).
Size is awesome but 200mT is 40Y LoM for 5mtpa plant which can yield 100-150m usd revenues. So 400mt, 600mT becomes awesome on paper but materially won't result in more theoretical revenue unless you double or triple production rates or build multiple mines/facilities.
Speaking with MEI management even with their scale we're likely going to target 6mtpa range give or take.
So at 600mT resource talking. 100Y LoM. the market tends to not value companies based on resource size anymore but NPVs which whether it's 50Y or 100Y LOM you can expect the company won't be worth double. maybe 30-50% more.
Drilling out a large resource is more about having the ability to then grab the best parts for mine I put given you the best economics in early production. whilst also flagging a huge potential resource for 50Y plus more production. Both VMM and MEI will have ample resource to select from to underpin future studies and hence why I don't think doubling or tripling Mei resource will double or triple the price. VMM yet to print that MRE to the market but once it does should be no reason to double or triple the price because it would validate the prediction of a similar size/grade/composition project as MEI and despite having larger tonnages available across the MeI tenement suite both project likely to have very similar economics in first 20-30Y of production. (assuming high grade areas and thickness are largely similar - which drilling is suggesting is probably the case)
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