RE: MTR7 Aug 2018 16:40
Good Qs - I STILL haven't been through the presentation mate so I've got to catch up but they're likely implying zones of mineralisation at different depths and the NPF contact is deep - c600m down - and yes they are most definitely assaying the NPF contact because it's very, very important, in addition to what is found less far down within the dome structures themselves.
What many may not have grasped yet is that while we're drilling these domes for copper mineralisation we're also testing for the NPF contact/continuation and the grades on that contact. The NPF is what underlies the ENTIRE 12k sq km of JV land and that of the new 4k sq km KML JV land too and, yes, Cupric Canyon's 400mt @ 1-2% resource next to us also - ALL of it :)
The reason we keep probing the NPF contact is because while we may get some super grades like we did today on A4 Dome from less far down, the overall width of those grades is, clearly, physically limited by the size of the dome itself as they are narrower at the top than the bottom :) That said, 52m is a stonking width at 1.5% and these domes are miles across!
The point about the deep NPF contact is that you're talking about a layer of Copper resource that is relatively flat, rather than thrusted up into a dome shape, and virtually unlimited in length and width so if you're going underground anyway to do your mining then if you can prove that there's, say, 0.6%-1% Copper on that sort of scale at c600m depth then you are talking about staggering amounts of Copper down there.
Nobody wants to go to 600m depth for their Copper but if the overall project economics dictate (Copper price/already going underground for the good 1%+ grades to 2-400m or so anyway/already have a processing plant built and paid for etc) that it could be an almost unlimited amount of Copper to add to your easier/cheaper to access stuff from the domes that you're already mining from above it anyway then it's well worth finding out what could be down there and on what sort of scale should the economics prove viable to go for it at some point in the future.
We already know that the Copper at the world's primary supply mines (50% of primary supply from just twenty or so mines, most of which are a century old and depleting rapidly!) is down to less than 0.5% in some cases so they're already earmarking $billions of Dollars of capex to go after their own deep, yet still low grade, Copper because they've already mined everything above it but have already paid for the plant(s) to process it on the higher grade but now depleted shallower resource..
I'm a bit worn now but hopefully that helps :)
Better at depth? Yes but bear in mind that these seven domes we're drilling are buried such that the "belly" of the main resource is likely to kick in at 200m+ so it's to be expected.
Yes, good news about A1 Dome too :)
No more than a couple of weeks for more news imo.
HTH!
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