RE:Serial DisappointmentI also missed the conference call but am listening the recorded call which is available on the TMAC website. Your are correct that they have limited faces to mine. Management has run into some problems with sill development. The deepest part of the mine is having some ground water issues that typically migrate to the deepest part of the mine where they are planning to mine the BTM(?) zone (2020 mining area).
They are blending high and low grade for production for 2 reasons:
1) They are behind in Mine Development Actual vs plan... so they blend due to lower tons.
2) I believe Management is keeping its powder dry on the high grade material until such time that the recoveriy percentage gets closer to the 90% mine plan. This is a good strategy in my opinion so that they can keep throughput up and use ore that is uneconomic on a stand alone basis.
The scavenger columns should pick up 4%-9% that is being lost in solution currently. They should only lose 1%-4% if things operated as they should (see pg 16 of MD&A). They will lose 39 million by year end in solution... this is the biggest challenge facing the company. Sometimes the gold lost in solution reached 100 gpt!! They need to solve this issue. Management is aware of it and they are speaking openly about it.
There was no discussion about climate change and how it might affect the mine. The permafrost is melting and as this frozen water melts it will want to migrate to the ocean and low spots in the mine. This could be an issue in future years. It is also a concern that the stability of the mine rock. I suspect this topic will come up at some point. It could be a real issue or maybe it can be solved by merely increasing pumping capacity.