The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring financial educator and author Jared Dillian has been released. Listen here.
From the zoom meeting, the next items of news we expect before Easter break (so before friday)
10. Next news (likely before Easter 🐣) is:-
- Phase 1 graphite;
(high grade assay results for flagship graphite project)
- consolidation for Blesberg;
(adding more licences)
- Tomra arrival;
(final bit of processing equipment with 4x the capacity of the Rados sorter at Blesberg to bring capacity to 5000t of SC6 a month or over $5m revenue a month)
- Jana’s report for Kinusi
(including plans to produce a simple copper cement process which is 4x more valuable than concentrate)
Blesburg - first lithium revenue due in May
Kinusi - first copper revenue due Q2
NyoriNyori - first graphite revenue due 2H
Rain, they have only done geo samples and trenching assay results and tested samples on the pilot plant which hasn't been installed yet.
The variance in samples of between 7% and 31% with such a small scale means its impossible to release an official estimate.
We know the final milling circuit can do 5tph so at 24/7/365 that would be a theoretical max capacity of 42kt of 25% copper ore worth $1200/t = $50m but we don't know what gold byproducts are worth and we don't know the recoveries at scale or what the price of Copper will be in 2 months, or what improvements Yana has suggested that are to do with more valuable copper cement.
You missed my obvious mistake yesterday so you are clearly clueless.
You seem to think the economics of a mine revolve around some high grade drill despite disregarding the political, logistical, geographical and metallurgical challenges.
Low hanging fruit means high grade and low risk for all over the above^
You asked me to look at a certain drill hole of another project so I did and the high grade gold strike appeared 100m under surface. That's a lot of digging to get there and the pitnwouod be over 100km away from a biomass power plant that still requires built.
You are relying on $200m capex with a £15m market cap company. If you listened to the soon to be chairman of marula and succesful mining euntrepeuner being interviewed (link to youtube video in my post from this morning) you will know that he would never target a high capex deep mine. They only target mines that can have money spent on them to get into production in a year or less.
Your mine is on about year 5 of feasability studies still at the lre funding stage and you are trying to compare these two miners. You don't understand the different phases and their cash risks and are blinkered by feasability studies even when they aren't all that positive. Asiamet NPV 8 study has a variation where NPV is only $100m, and that's if the project comes in on budget and on time. $100m cash buffer over 10 years for a $200m+ capex project is high risk and if that's your reference point then I'm afraid I can't help you and your wasting our time here repeating the same mantra over and over like it has weight.
Kinusi is about 6 months behind Blesburg in exploration terms but is still deemed economical hence a phase 1 pilot plant is almost ready for delivery.
Further info due in RNS this week so please bore off with the tonnage semantics. I've given you the rough tonage maths as asked (a few times now, $12m rev yesterday and theoretical max $50m today based on 25% concentrate and not the talked about csment value add) the links, the videos, the released info.
Please stop, you know the story I've typed the entire thing, we did the hard work and your getting it for free without doing the hard work. It's actually insulting
"To date, 47 miness developed, sold or currently being produced"
"Understand the complexities of mining in Africa"
"Have boots on the ground"
"Run the mine pit to port internally"
"Bullish market for 5-7 years"
1minite31s conformation that the aim is to grow mines for the benefit of shareholders
(They have money to spend and)"We understand what we are building, understand the assets we are involved in, how lucrative, optimising"
"We integrated a lot of that (IP knowledge) technology over ten years to control stockpiles and stockpile analysis"
"Almost never have a failed shipment, learned from hard knocks"
"Objectively chase weekly targets"
"Pit to port security analysis"
"Very agile, Operating as a private company"
Q-global to act as intermediateries between ĵuniors and majors
"Community projects put in place, strong foundations in place" 💪 🙏🌴🏔
https://youtu.be/j5VOfPzrxCo?si=yatrI_EQ3ug7GbkF
"Marula is sitting on, in my opinion, class A assets"
"Was taken aback by where the company was on valuations"
"Towards proving up the large ore body that is there. All of these projects, they are low strip ratio, easily accessible, not complex projects"
"Not interested in underground mines"
"These operations are very easy to get started, plant and equipment already ordered and not to the detrement of Marula, or there shareholders."
33m30s 🔥
"Larger projects can cost billions, so many anomalys,
timeframes, risks. We have low hanging fruit,
(Blesburg)lithium project
Potentially a few hundred strikes
Even if only ten or fifteen very good strikes
"There's potential for multi million tonnes of lithium here. Open cast, easy extractable, low strip"
"Even if lithium prices were to half, we would still be very very profitable."(lithium price date of interview 13th November =$1955/t)
https://twitter.com/jczuleta/status/1724663998866473222?t=iLTDUd-e7jIpq3KltvTuOw&s=19
"Samples of the copper ore mined and azurite and malachite copper mineralisation exposed in shallow pits and shafts on the licences reported copper grades of 7.28%, 19.12% and 31.32%"
“Instead of adopting the traditional phase of exploration, development, production, which can take decades and would require a lot of capital, our focus is to find existing under-capitalised assets – primarily where there has been small-scale mining activity of commodities which are in high demand, not just now but in the medium and long-term – and invest in their development,” explains Brewer.
https://m.miningweekly.com/article/marula-seeks-jse-listing-provides-kinusi-exploration-update-2023-06-29
Here is a massive sample underway of that 40kþ stockpile
https://twitter.com/JB_MiningAfrica/status/1673965832865554432?t=LOjMlgZKbOexnyvhTh-YxA&s=19
Here is visuals of the Phase 1 drill results from September.
https://twitter.com/MarulaPlc/status/1704476261513363707?t=qH79EYZT46Fm8_7ru6YCAw&s=19
Phase 2 was not complete until the end of december
They didn't report Li below 800ppm**. Cut off grade is the wrong terminology used there. Apologies again.
Amature historical drill campaign and geo sampling techniques meant we got the project for cheap.
With a stockpile of 40kt of 5%+ Li2O ready to be upgraded and sold to the right offtake partner
No historical results for Li2O* Below 1.7% (made a typo in the chemical formulae there)
Quite incredible to use such a high cut off grade when the plant can handle 0.2% Li2O and for example Prem African minerals use 0.4% as their cut off grade
Original Blesburg reverce circulation drill campaign 2017.
They used a cut off grade of 800ppm Li.
To convert percentage lithium (Li) to percentage lithium oxide (Li2O) multiply by 2.15 so they didn't report lithium grades below around 1.7%LiO2.
Also, RC drilling misses the nugget effect which can increase the average grade significantly.
https://www.australianvanadium.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/AVL-Blesberg-Exploration-FINAL-050717.pdf
Notice how much tantalum and feldspar they find everywhere. We know that these byproducts are worth up to 50% of the final value.
1000ppm = 1% by the way
8000ppm tantalum in places. That's 8%. And tantalum is worth £227k/ton, and will be crushed and sorted as a byproduct already included in the AISC.
https://twitter.com/JB_MiningAfrica/status/1731785751761711216?t=Am5c9r5NEOflWhuRK3XwvA&s=19
See these images in this tweet of drill locations and mineralisation encountered ***During Marulas 2023 drill campaign***
They show the 2017 and the November 2023 phase 1 diamond drill locations side by side.
Notice the image how the 2023 drills hit the pegmatite over much larger drill intersections than the 2017 RC drill program.
The phase 2 drill program was done over 50m infill drilling on the hard rock target and has formed part of the mine plan for an expected 10 year operation based on a plant output of 5kt/month.
Seems like a large percentage of the ore which isn't Lithium is also very valuable byproducts. (More than covers Opex we are told, assays pending)
Are you not understanding what im saying on purpose?
https://twitter.com/JB_MiningAfrica/status/1682316943447977985?t=BTdPFrz0BqV3yT1MXRVlRQ&s=19
^^This is the phase one plant^^ It's a PILOT plant. Pilot means small, cheap, and I am saying it could theoretically run for 100 years based on estimated ore body size. I am telling you this to allow you to comprehend the ease and scale of this small scale pilot plant and why it can VERY EASILY be fed with the surface gugh grade material for many many years.
Repeat, phase one pilot plant small scale operation to bring in tens of millions of $ a year.
Phase 2 will be much larger and more expensive and will be designed based on the phase 2 drilling data.
For the fifth time please watch the videos as your sounding ridiculous now with your incomprehension.
Drilling let's them know what is 150m under the ground in all directions. 5000m at 150m would be 33 drills.
The pilot plant has a feed capacity of 20tph so running 24 hours that's 172k tonnes. The initial Exploration Target is 10-15mt, so phase one would be a 100year operation based on these figures.
JORC is required to know how big a phase 2 copper cathode plant to build. Phase one is tested, funded, designed and built, waiting to be delivered and producing revenue in Q2 2024.
This asset was only acquired in Q4 2022 don't forget.
The point of a Jorc resource is to provide an audited account of what size of resource is in the ground which then can be used to feed into a pre, definitive then bankable feasability study.
All of this takes years, sometimes a decade and is required before a bank will invest in the project as there is then a high confidence that the investment can be paid back.
This is required when a resource is large and complicated. With the DFS for asiamets primary asset, the IRR for example is around 30% and the NPV has a range between $100m to $250m or something.
This is a project that requires a lot of infostructure built, including a biomass power plant. It's a hugely technical undertaking. Simply having a robust JORC is just the start of the journey.
You can't compare this normal sequence of events with Marulas projects as they all have high grade at surface wherr there are existing mining operations. The projects are all fully funded into production already without the costly and lengthy feasability studies.
The CPR and JORC are being done, but as money is available and the projects have already been calculated by multiple (competent) mining engineers as feasible, the Company have fast tracked buying and designing the processing pant before releasing the drill results.
Its backwards but the economics of the resource are such that its almost guaranteed to have a very short payback period for the money invested. (IRR well in excess of 100%)
Copper, grades of 10%+ in places at surface and is already being mined and sold profitably by the 30% owner who is already established in the area.
Lithium, a stockpile of material extensively tested (30 tonnes of sampled material) resulted in an average grade of over 5% LiO2, the offtake is for 5.5% minimum and they are targeting over 6%. The stockpile is over 46kt so do the maths. No drilling or blasting, only JCB's, crushing and sorting and it's $1100/t plus $500 byproducts, beforenwe even consider what is in the ground.
There is an assessed 30km along the road too which is same geology and 80x larger waiting to be explored from profits later this year.
That puts the stockpile alone at an in situ value of $700m. Not bad for a capex and exploration spend of under $7m
"At the Kinusi Copper Mine, the US$2.04 million, will be used to meet the costs of the previously announced Phase II Program of exploration activities and further work which will include amongst other things, the following:
Work will focus on the high-grade copper mineralisation at the main Sasimo Prospect
LIDAR and airborne geophysics survey
Drill access roads and drill pad preparation
Initial 12 -hole, 1,500m as part of a larger planned 5,000m resource drilling program aimed at defining a maiden JORC Compliant mineral resource estimate"
RNS 19th january^^
https://twitter.com/JB_MiningAfrica/status/1687424209620729856?t=ZXZKJTPLZElcEEPWH0vAZA&s=19
Copper recoveries looking very good from the pilot plant tests^^
https://twitter.com/JB_MiningAfrica/status/1694658969099264116?t=O4AYwIY-LYOl0naHnyqouQ&s=19
Here is photos of the processed high grade concentrate and an artists impression of the initial phase 1 processing plant. ^^
Sounds like they are going for a further acid leach phase to turn the output into a high value copper cement. I would imagine this will run in tandem with the plant already built? Or maybe they will feed the low grade material into the cement process only?
All will be revealed before Easter once Jason gets the reports back from the newly employed General Manager and copper expert Yana
Anyone can pick up a rock yes. But the very very high grade rocks at Kinusi they have collected from surface? Here is a big pile of them. I doubt you could pick up more than one at a time
https://ibb.co/0nxBbCJ
We covered all this on the 1st March, I spent hours finding all the research sources for you.
A CPR which is almost ready for release at Kinusi can be a very long and detailed report.
Have you ever heard of a company going from nothing to profitability and multiple JORC releases for say £10m expenditure in 18months? Hang about and you will
Anyone can pick up a rock yes. But the very very high grade rocks at Kinusi they have collected from surface? Here is a big pile of them. I doubt youncould pick up more than one at a time
https://ibb.co/0nxBbCJ
If you are genuinely interested,
Here is the research again. Do us a favour and watch them please as your lack of understanding here is painful.
CEO interviewed on the Biztech academy
https://youtu.be/ypL2y63o9dk?si=dLLylNM2-iIVJB3F
Billionaire mining entraupener who is the largest shareholder and fronted all the cash to develop these assets interview
https://youtu.be/j5VOfPzrxCo?si=20cBNZzf4dumKpVS