RE:RE:RE:RE:Conference callkegman wrote: Help me understand your point MV. If we put put on the pad more stuff to leach out, the bigger pond can take on more...how does that not lead to more ozs per year? If we stack less then it will decrease production would it not? Screening....can't belive there wasn't another lawsuit LOL. Would like to see how they bring in Olive into the equation and then have a concrete plan for a minimum debt repayment plan. That is what I would have asked for had I been on the call. They can undrestate it but based on 180,000 ozs we expect to pay down $XXX next year. (based on $1850 gold US) That is pretty straightforward and I bet wildly understate the price they will avg next year. Hedge is well over $1900. That should tell you what the market expects Gold to be at next year. Bottom line.....I hope we are leaving the $5 to $6 range behind soon.
Kegman, my point is that you can't increase the tonnes of ore stacked on the HLP unless you increase the tonnes of ore processed through the primary crusher which already operates on a year-round basis.
The original mining plan was based on primary crushing 12 months, but secondary/tertiary crushing for 9 months. The primary crusher has a nominal 30,000 tpd rate while the secondary crushers have a 40,000 tpd rate. This meant that the secondary crushers could process in 9 months all of the ore crushed by the primary crusher in 12 months. So by increasing secondary crushing to 11 months just means you are crushing the same amount of ore over a longer period.
I believe that the bottleneck is the "fines" issue identified earlier where VG had proposed setting up infrastructure to screen out the fines to increase throughput through the secondary/tertiary crushers. They haven't been able to implement this design improvement presumably because they are strapped for cash. Their bankers are likely reluctant to lend them more when they have failed to make a dent in their outstanding loans.
I think you will likely see a flowthrough financing in the new year to finance more exploration drilling. The last one was done by issuing 1 million shares at $20. Those days are gone - now more likely to be 2.5 million shares at $8.