from management Thanks for the message.
I was on site last week and things are moving along very nicely. You would have seen in press releases last year that the overall construction was affected by industrial action in the steel industry in South Africa and this is what has effectively moved the commissioning of the project out by almost three months. We are still planning on putting ground through the plant before the end of March and should have diamonds in hand by the second week in April.
Mining is well ahead of schedule as this was not delayed by the industrial action. This has been a win for us as we now have more than 250,000 tonnes of high grade material on stockpile which will be fed into the plant once commissioning is complete. What it has also done is provide us with time to do more stripping in the pit. This gives us a lot more flexibility in ore blending and cashflow management when we do get into production.
The operations teams are now 90% recruited and we have the staff on site to push the commissioning process. On a call this morning it was noted that there are currently more than 1000 people on site which demonstrates the push to get things completed.
Even with a three month delay, the mine is still scheduled to produce more than 300,000 carats during 2012 and with the new valuation figures, is scheduled to generate more than $90m of revenue. The key for me at the moment is to let the market know that management is delivering on our promises. The capital is within the original feasibility estimate of $120M (actually we are trending slightly under this). I feel that what we have achieved in the last 18 months is a demonstration of what junior companies can do if they have the correct people on board (people who have done it before).
Please let me know if you have any further queries. Below is a picture taken of the autogenous mill two weeks ago. Lining is currently underway and it will be ready to receive ore within the next two to three weeks.
should be a good year
jaws