Accessing higher ore grades early Accessing higher grade ore early in a mine project’s life is advantageous because it allows a company to increase revenue while operating costs are the same. This has the effect of increasing the NPV.
The Vizcachitas 43-101 report highlights this point on page 108. “The importance of the early diorite porphyry and hydrothermal breccias in controlling the higher-grade mineralization of the deposit is the main difference from the previous geological models. This separation of the units means that the mine plan can be designed to extract these units in the early phases of the project.” There’s additional discussion on page 25 of, “...preferentially mining the higher-grade supergene, hydrothermal breccias and the early diorite porphyries...” for the mill feed grade over the first five years of operation. Tables 16.4 and 16.5 represent proposed schedules on processing the higher grade ore resource (> 0.50% Cu) early in the mine’s life based on the different mill output scenarios.
Santo Tomas is similarly well-positioned in this regard. From page 47 of the Santo Tomas April 2020 Technical report, “...approximately 85% of the highergrade material occurs in the North Zone, predominantly in a coherent, shallow, central portion of the North Zone deposit, with the remainder occurring as scattered outliers throughout the North and South Zone areas.” Figure 35 shows the historical drilling intercepts in the north zone and as one gets closer to the Rio Fuerte river, the Cu grade trends up greater than 0.50% with some intercepts exceeding 1% Cu. Just on the other side of the river lies the Brasiles zone. Of particular note, the translation of “fuerte” to english means “strong” or “robust.”
Looking forward to the North Zone 3D-IP results.
Vizcachitas 43-101 report:
https://www.losandescopper.com/site/assets/files/3479/2019-06-13-pea-vizcachitas.pdf