Weekend Pancakes Again - Novo's Mining EdgeI just want to point out some huge differences (and misconceptions) with regards to comparing the South African Witwatersrand Gold basin to that of the Pilbara in Australia. It’s best described in an essay put together by Andrew Jackson who is a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists.
https://www.911metallurgist.com/blog/witwatersrand-gold-deposits If the reading is a bit too extensive for you, then you can simply watch the accompanying video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRKk1HYTlH8&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=SprottEDU
- The 15 minute mark explains the origin of the gold in SA Wits Basin
- The 21 minute mark explains the location of the gold within the Basin
- The 39 minute 40 second mark explains the mining technique currently being applied. Mining the SA Wits is not easy.
- The 43 minute 20 second mark explains the future of gold mining the SA Wits. Bottom line: The future is not golden by most measures. The mining of South Africa’s Wits Basin is diabolically challenging – both physically and socially – an elephant moving towards extinction.
https://www.911metallurgist.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Witwatersrand-mine.png 
The gold is predominantly hosted in 20 to 30 cm thick conglomerate units that dip towards the center of the basin at 20 to 42° degrees. The reefs obviously cannot be mined to this narrow width and most stopes are just over 1 m in height which means that there are significant dilution of the ore by waste. And more importantly, it means that a high degree of manual labor is required which is costly both in monetary and social terms.
"The future of the Witwatersrand gold mines. This financial, social and political squeeze has been going on for many years now and this is reflected in South Africa steadily shrinking share of the world gold production from a dominant 70% in the 1960s down to just 7% in 2011. So do the South African Witwatersrand gold fields have a future? South Africa still has about 1.2 billion ounces in reserves almost 50% of the world’s reserves however a combination of factors is steadily increasing costs and risks so that the vast majority of these reserves are likely to become uneconomical and figuratively evaporate. These factors include ever deeper mining with associated rising costs and technical risks, the union driven workforce that has shown that it can bring the industry to a halt in support of wage claims, a restive and underprivileged national population which is being told by certain politicians that nationalization of the mines will benefit them, power shortages that will continue to plague this country and the mines for the next few years before additional capacity can be brought online.
There are huge gold reserves and resources still remaining almost half of the world’s gold reserve still lie in mine in the Witwatersrand basin but these are generally too deep for juniors to mine or explore for. They are the domain of the mining majors. In recent years we’ve seen several smaller companies try to mine or explore for Witwatersrand deposits but ending up bankrupt and stepping away from the environment. Juniors are out of their depth in the Witwatersrand both literally and metaphorically. The Witwatersrand basin contribution to world gold production will continue to wane due to both macro and micro economic factors with the decline of this huge source of gold production …..."
And the above is the critical difference between Wits 1 and our Novo inspired quest for Pilbara’s Wits 2. The mining of South Africa’s Wits Basin is diabolically challenging – both physically and socially. And technological solutions are not coming to the rescue fast enough to keep the business of deep crust gold mining viable too much longer.
As Novo investors, we love pancakes.
https://stockhouse.com/companies/bullboard?symbol=v.nvo&postid=26589969 "Flat as a pancake" is a key aspect of NVO's future prospects. It appears the Pilbara craton migrated atop the earth's crust relatively undisturbed over the last few billion layers. Which means that the conglomerate layers are likely to be more horizontal and hopefully closer to surface where open pit and conventional shaft mining can still access high grades for decades.
Bottom line: If the NW Pilbara does materialize into a Wits 2, there exists the added reality that it may actually have more accessible and minable gold than Wits 1 (even though less total ounces in the ground)."
Tx