RE:RE:RE:good results, lots of cash, await drill results Fantastic summary, thank you. I bought more on the dip. those following the company KNEW that the decrease in production was part of the plan. There is a lot going on right now to increase the economics of the mine. That just causes a short/temporary slow down in production for now. But soon we will be ramped up.
wvandamm wrote: The production guidance was already given in the company presentation of March. The reason _is_ given in the press release and is the lower grade in the West / East pits relative to the Center pit. The rest of the statement implies they expect an increased production profile with the new Mine Plan (to come September-ish) that will incorporate the new resources resulting from the ongoing drill campaign.
The infrastructure is capable of that higher production profile. The crusher (after the crush-size increase introduced end 2020) has had several week-averages at 10.000tpd, and several days peaking near 13.000tpd. The leach pad space was highlighted as a production bottleneck recently, but as indicated in the press release the new 3a extension is expected to receive ore in Q2, with 3b underway. The merrill-crowe processing facility I have never heard highlighted as a bottleneck.
From David Splett I also understood they held back on the crusher throughput this quarter because of the leach pad bottleneck. So that and the resource model are the limiting factors right now.
So the drill campaign will not only update the resource reserves but is also expected to lead to an increase in production again with an updated Mine Plan. If they would be able to refocus on areas with an average grade again of say ~0.7 (as before, so not that unlikely) and effectively load the crusher at 10k tpd then 50-60k ounces of production would be very feasible.
So long term investors should really eagerly await the drill results & mine plan update. Note we've been drilling for almost a full year now. The phase 1 and 2 drill programs for 32000 meters were expected to finish end feb, so I guess we're already on a next extension.