Mining 55,000 oz a year at 8.80g/t will produce lots of profit, especially if you cut back on the high dollar exploration costs in the non producing areas. Claude has about $30 million in cash flow per year with 6 g/t. If gold goes up the profits will really start flowing in. If told goes down, you can still make the $30 million per year with this material. Lake Shore would LOVE to be in this position. They have to get by with 3.9 g/t. but still produced 85,000 oz last year. It takes a lot more work though. Sometimes it is not just about how many oz a company can produce.
I agree that takinig this profit to expand the size of the current mill would be a wise choice to get to the point were you are producing 75,000oz at 8.8g/t. This in one way cuts into long term production at the mine, but it is important to be able to mine your own gold with out asking for more debt or dilution.
At some point, as the profit start to build, the 1.3 million oz at 9 g/t over at Madsen will come into play.
This company has the assets to build a very nice cash generating machine. It will take some guts to do what it takes to make this happen.
Let's face it, two banking facilities decided to loan Claude money in this environment. Hundreds of other juniors will not be that lucky...