Member Info for Cornishknocker

I know the man they need.... They just need to tempt him from New Zealand

Tungsten is sold in a very strange way as Ammonium Para tungstate, in units called Metric Tonne Units which contain 10kg - I dont have a clue why. Tungsten as a metal weighs 19 tonnes per cubic metre and tin 7.2 tonnes per cubic metre. Where this has the most impact is in the ground, as a lode has a volumetric size (length x width x height), the denser the material in it, the more tonnes of that material. In simple terms if you had a 10m x 10m x 10m block of tin, you would have 7200 tonnes of tin (and be rich), if it was tungsten you would have 19000 tonnes (and be very rich!)

A MTU is 10kg of Ammonium Para Tungstate (APT). Tungsten has a SG of about 19t/m3 and Tin about 7.2t/m3 .

The prices have gone nuts, if the silver price stays where it is today, the average at the end of the quarter will have seen a 50% rise on q2 average prices and gold 12%

Yes theres a difference there, ultimately SXX got into trouble as they gambled the farm on being able to go it alone on a multi billion pound development. If we went down the same road with Salinbas we would be at risk of going the same way - at that point the profits from Red Rabbit (and Tavsan as well) would be tiny compared to our outgoings. As I see it we are ultimately protected from such an eventuality.

As a large Copper, Gold Molybdenum porphyry, this is going to bring the likes of Rio, Newcrest and Anglo American sniffing - it's what they want. The deal we have will prevent them from buying it off of us on the cheap, they are predatory in the same way as big pharmaceutical companies are - look at what happened with Sirius.

Ultimately that will depend on the ore body structure and pit design.

The good thing about porphyries is they generate large returns and also the multi commodity element provides protection against price variations. The bad thing us they are massive tonnage low grade, so from a processing point of view you have a large multi stream plant to deal with the huge tonnage and different metals - that costs big money - you also need a massive mining fleet -what Kiziltepe moves in a year they'll be aiming to move in a month here.

That is stunning, that's an in ground value of about $4 billion. If we take a capex of $500 million and a open cost of $1100 per oz thats a $1.7 billion profit - this is why we needed the bigger partner,as that is the only way we are going to develop this mine.

Looking at todays quarterly results, revenue for the quarter will be between $9 million and $9.5 Million depending on how much of the stored silver was sold. That means that the increasing gold price is more than compensating for the falling grade.

The one thing to be remembered, every ounce in the ground has always been there, the money spent is finding it, so yes value is added by exploration, on the flip side every oz mined will never be replaced. So the money expended adds value but at the same time we are constantly depleting the best ore. Does one outweigh the other? Who knows?

Its been another great quarter for the gold price, the average price for the quarter is up 8.2% to $1712.39 for anyone concerned on the skew by coronavirus, compared to Q4 last year its a rise of 14.55%. The average silver price is down 2.89% to $16.38 (-5.49% on Q4), however that is being heavily skewed by the hammering that silver took between March and May, the price has now pretty much recovered to its peak levels - as the silver wasn't sold during this period, the average price received is likely to be much higher than the period average.

The biggest difference between cash cost and actual cost is loan repayments which aren't included in the cash cost

Theres two ways of working the revenue either using (gold ounces x gold price) + (silver ounces x silver price) or alternatively (effective realised gold price x gold ounces) - the silver credit us already factored in by effective gold realised price = (silver sales $+ gold sales $)/gold ounces.

Going off the RNS it appears that there are still loans outstanding to the JV partners.

As I read it, the JV had four principal liabilities: -

1. Capital construction loan (now fully repaid)
2. Working Capital Loan (to be repaid october 21)
3. Loan from AAU, (being repaid how much total, how much monthly)
4. Loan from Proccea (as 3.)

That's a cracking spreadsheet by the way!

I agree Ash, I think processing capacity needs to be increased - but this may be far more complex than just adding a ball mill. It's a cyanide in leach operation which may need increasing in size generally

For the mining contractor, the amount of ore moved is immaterial, his costs and revenues are based on the total material moved - I used Q3 as the total material moved was 1.068 million tonnes - in Q1 he moved 1.031 Million tonnes - so very similar Q4 was 1.082MT, so again it's similar.

As the mill is running at capacity, the total processing running costs will be broadly the same each quarter (excluding repairs/maintenance)

So really the only two variables are the gold produced and price received- what's on the stockpile is immaterial - you've paid to mine it (in the material moved) but not to process it and you havent recieved anything for it.

The price recieved is unimportant to your costs as that's revenue.

Sorry, just to be clear my comparison with mining costs were with Q3 2019, not Q4.