Member Info for Cornishknocker

Its going to be an interesting one for sure, I noticed Priority drilling delivering drill rods to crofty this week.

Either 1.2% Tin or 9% copper are good grades, to have both together is fantastic. Find a 1km strike and 500m down dip extension and you have the makings if something amazing - obviously there is nothing to support that at present other than other mined structures in the area.

Heres the GPDO application for united downs: -

https://planning.cornwall.gov.uk/online-applications/simpleSearchResults.do?action=firstPage

No I wasn't, I was a student at CSM at the time.

Brownfield investments were formed by David Giddings tge MD of the mine when it shut it 1998.
A few days before closure he bought all the assets of the company for the princely sum of £1, so that included tge land at Wheal Jane, South Crofty, the access shaft and infrastructure at Roskear, all of the plant and mineral rights. The land was wrapped up in brownfield investments. In 2001 baseresult purchased tge South Crofty assets and mineral rights.

Roskear minerals is a company owned by the Pendarves family, who are the historic estate owner of the Roskear mines. They are now based in Somerset, heavily involved in racehorse breeding and run Chetwood wealth management.

No not back on topic.

Thats the problem isn't it - infrastructure.....

The problem is the entire system is currently set to build infrastructure behind development not in front.

We have the CIL, so developers pay for council infrastructure once they are awarded PP. So when you object saying there's no infrastructure - there can't be as its not been paid for at that stage.

Private utilities are not allowed to reinforce ahead of demand, as it us against licence conditions - which is really frustrating when you work in the industry as it makes planning a nightmare.

Around August id say.

The UK housing market is nothing shy of a government scam.

1. An essential of life is shelter everybody needs a house.
2. The government sets targets for new housing for LAS to hit.
3. Every site that gets proposed for housing is objected to, with government mps often leading the opposition.
4. The LAs fail to meet the government targets and the government blame them, at the same time promoting a planning system that encourages nimbyism.
5. Due to the restricted supply prices rise
6. As prices rise, less people are able to afford houses, so the government introduces schemes to name houses "more affordable"
7. The government schemes succeed in making more money available to purchasers creating more purchasers, pushing prices up.
8. And on and on it goes......

6000 tonnes of 50% concentrate
3000t of tin metal
Ore at 1.2%Sn
80% recovery

3000/0.8= 3750t of mined tin
3750/1.2 x 100 =312,500tpa mining rate

If production can be increased to 1MTPA (Bear in mind thats 5 times croftys historic mining rate), then yes that would increase concentrate production to 18000 tonnes per year.

The freeport status adds an extra dimension to it.

The combined concentrate output of united downs and South Crofty would be around 6000tpa, add another 2000 from Redmoor and another 1000t from hemerdon and potentially another 2000 tonnes from Cornish tin.

Thats 11,000 tonnes of domestic production, add to that anglo saxony mining (same board members as tungsten west) and the production from the Iberian peninsula and possibly Morocco, it adds to the argument for a European Smelter.

Plymouth with free port status would have a financial advantage and is close to Hemerdon, which is close to Langage science Park, which is home to a large gas fired power station, as a result has a high pressure gas main on site, which would be required for a smelter.

Of course what we are talking about here is a European vertically integrated metal industry - tgat would require some substantial UK-EU collaboration.

Absolutely, the capital cost on opening United Downs and construction if a mill at Crofty is likely to be £60 Million. Obviously once you gave a dfs, its not necessarily all equity.

The first thing: - the pumps are not installed, they are sitting next to the shaft.

Secondly to construct the water treatment plant at crofty and dewater the mine is going to cost approximately £25 million, so be very clear tge £8 million is not to be used for that purpose.

What Crofty does have is it is shovel ready, once the finance is in place the go button can be pressed.

So what is the £8 million for?

Last years drill intercept at United downs was frankly bonkers grades, if you work that out to a tonne of ore it comes to around $1000 per tonne, in gold mining terms that would be about 16g/t. With the structural geology in the area, that has the potential to run in excess of 1km of strike and 700m down dip, which at the indicated widths would be huge tonnages. Its easily accessible, in that it already has a decline driven to the front door. So this money is intended to drill that structure and see what it is.

If its mineable there is no permission required for a processing plant at crofty, it already has it and at those values it would pay to dewater crofty with ease.

So in short any investment at the moment is an exploration investment (or gamble) in them proving that structure at United downs.

The question is, is it there? Given the history and structural geology, I'd say its better than evens.

Smelting is highly unlikely to take place in the uk. To be viable, you are looking at a design feed rate of around 40,000 tonnes per year. I don't believe there are currently any smelters in Europe, so you would be looking at shipping to the far east or south America at a rate of 1-2 containers per day.

Of course with more European and North African production, there is a potential viability for smelting in Europe and actually Cornwall is well positioned geographically, being central to North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and Saxony.

With regards to dewatering crofty, pumping at 25000m3 per day it is going to take about 2 years to completely dewater.

Tailings ponds were not widely used in Cornwall, in fact wheal Janes clemows Valley dam was the only one ever used (the fifteen ponds you see are separate impoundments on tge same pond) from memory the dam walls there are approximately 80m high. RTZ started construction of a new dam at Wheal Maid which was never seriously used. South Crofty and Geevor let theirs run straight out to sea.

Yes, the water treatment system will precipitate out the suspended solids, iron and other contaminantsthis leaves behind a sldge that is passed through a filter press creating a dewatered "cake" of contaminated material which is removed as hazardous waste to a licenced facility. Wheal jane is licenced for this material as there water treatment system on site uses the same process. This will be moved by conventional tipper truck (exactly the same as the ones hopefully bringing the ore from united downs)

The Roskear shaft site is a key site for reopening South Crofty, which without land access there would make reopening very tricky as it is essential to the mine ventilation system (which is more important than the mineral rights).
The shaft itself was refurbished on the 1990s and as an asset to the mine is worth a fortune, to sink a similar new shaft would cost well in excess of £50 million.

That is really good news this morning. Tge mineral rights in South Croftys area historically belonged to two large estates: - the Pendarves Estate and the Bassett Estate. South Crofty itself was a Bassett mine (as was Dolciath), however the Roskears (New Dolcoath) belonged (and still do) to the Pendarves family. South Crofty were able to purchase the Bassett mineral rights a long time ago, but the Pendarves family have never been willing to sell theirs, preferring lease agreements.

For anyone unsure of the shear scale down here, have a look at thishttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oKarlMJDwmA 2.37 in is where this years diamond drilling is going to be focused- the pink diagonal line there is the wheal maid decline

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/3j93r-d4f910d-dir?vjs=1 This is mainly about tin, but there is some talk of copper as well. One company mentioned was meridian mining, which us a VMS deposit in Brazil. If you compare the grades there with Ming, it really shows how good our grades are.

Heres an interesting interview: - https://www.podbean.com/media/player/3j93r-d4f910d-dir?vjs=1