Kombat mine visit. I finally got my video together from my trip to the Kombat mine. A good bunch of guys on site at the moment, around twenty of them. There is an operations manager, a mineral resource manager, engineering manager, maintenance staff, four geologists, and around ten labours.
It is a more significant site than I expected, I do not know what I expected, but I was surprised how large of an area it covered. Some of the buildings need a little love and care, but nothing much. As for the plant, the ball mills, and some of the other equipment will require some maintenance, maybe some of the older gearboxes and electric motors could do with an upgrade, but again, not significant.
There are three sets of headgear on-site to bring the ore up the shafts to the surface, two at around 500 thousand tons a year and a larger one, which is in as new condition, can move 800 thousand a year. Along with the lifts, there are two ramps or declines, that can be used to haul ore to the surface. So two million tonnes a year can be easily brought to the surface with the existing infrastructure. The plant can process around 360 thousand tons a year as it is set up, so I can see it increased before long.
Expanding the plant throughput will not be an expensive exercise; crushing and grinding gear is not that expensive in the scheme of things. The infrastructure is excellent, plenty of water, power, good road access and a rail link.
Kombat has a resource of 700 thousand tons of copper and 20 million ounces of silver, six billion dollars at today's prices, so this will get back into production. Jed is moving to site for the next few months to make sure it does.