RE:conference call - good news, bad newsfirecracker 74,
What is your basis for stating that the 15,000 ounces from June isn't going to be repeated? Because some empty suit from Vancouver told you so on the CC?
And what makes you think gold production will be a little soft in quarter 3? Because some empty suit from Vancouver told you so on the CC? The same guy who doesn't even know what his underground resource is? 50k ounces? Nonsense, try 500k oz as of the last 43-101 report.
So rather than listening to the mindless babbling of some empty suits in Vancouver, why don't we go to the mine plan listed in Table 16-10 of the RPA NI 43-101 technical report dated March 25, 2020. That table lists the quarterly production schedule for the Tucano gold mine.
The Q2 2020 mine plan called for 406,000 metric tons of ore from the open pit blending it in with 415,000 metric tons of stockpile ore to process 821,000 metric tons of ore grading 1.31 g/t gold.
The actual open pit tons mined was 425,209 slightly higher than the mine plan and accounting for 1105 oz of gold above mine plan. However, given the total tons milled graded at an average of 1.48 g/t, actual production is running at 12 percent higher ore grades--above the mine plan but NOT UNUSUALLY SO!
Solving for the average stockpile grade, that number is 1.09 g/t.
So assuming that average ore grades continue to trend 12 percent above the mine plan, what is the gold production number for Q3?
The Q3 open pit tons mined number is 435,000 metric tons. If the ore grade remains at 1.79 g/t and does not go up, then 25,036 ounces of open pit ore would be mined in Q3 2020.
The Q3 stockpile number is 427,000 metric tons grading at 1.09 g/t equates to 14,965 ounces of gold.
Management expects recovery to increase from 90 percent to around 95 percent in Q3. The reason for this is that the oxide ore ratio increases from 43 percent in Q2 to 61 percent in Q3.
Add those two numbers and multiply by 95% and guess what? Q3 2020 gold production per the mine plan is 38,000 ounces which is about 3000 ounces higher than Q2 2020 gold production.
That number is a conservative baseline for two reasons:
- First, the mine plan has average processed ore grades increasing to 1.94 g/t in Q1 2021. So if I assume that we are on a linear ramp from 1.48 g/t in Q2 2020 to 1.94 g/t in Q1 2021, then I would expect Q3 2020 ore grades to be 0.15 g/t higher than Q2 or 1.63 g/t which implies 43,000 ounces of gold produced in Q3.
- Second, Q3 2020 is in the dry season at Tucano, where the planned mining rate goes up from 69,000 tpd to 79,000 tpd, so there is a high probability of the milled throughput increasing by 10 percent over mine plan. Two reasons for this. First is the seasonal increase in overall mining rate. Second is the installation of rock crushers to increase the availability of the plant by 3 percent from 90.3 percent to 93.7 percent.
Factor in these two bullish factors, and that takes the upper end of Tucano Q3 2020 gold production to 47,300 ounces. So my Q3 2020 gold production expectation is 38,000 ounces on the lower end and 47,300 ounces at the upper end--all based on Tucano's mine plan.
So please explain to me your logic for thinking that Tucano production will go down in Q3 2020?
I have looked at the published mine plan through Q3 2021, and I see sequentially increasing quarterly gold production through Q2 2021 topping out at 60,000 ounces per quarter in Q2 2021.