RE: GGP8 Jul 2022 13:41
And then in 2nd Interview with Bottlerocket/Liam talking about future growth at Havieron:-
* So how then, because obviously there's a lot of Capex needed to get that far, the transition to growth - how do Greatland grow from here?
- Well, let me answer that in in two parts. Firstly, just because in the preface, you talked about a lot of Capex, one of the brilliant elements of this and indeed of the joint venture with Newcrest is that Newcrest is effectively developing this as a mid-cap would, which is tailor made for Greatland’s balance sheet.
- What are we doing? We're driving in and developing the SE Crescent hitting that high grade ore, we're going to then take that through and process it and then have ounces of gold and tonnes of copper to sell and that will generate cash flow and then we can reinvest that into the mine to continue to grow that, continue to advance the decline to all the way to the bottom of the SE Crescent.
- But that also opens up additional access to these additional mining areas. It opens them up in terms of infrastructure so that when we do want to open them up for mining, we're sitting right next to them but also opens them up for drilling.
- Once you can put in an underground drill rig sitting right next to the Eastern Breccia or halfway down the decline to drill out that Northern Breccia, it's a shorter drilling length and that is obviously cheaper, but equally it shortens the cycle time for information. (Reporting cycle between results).
- So, you have these beautiful, you know, positive kind of feedback where drilling is cheaper and quicker and you understand those elements of the ore body quicker. And because you have infrastructure already near those elements, the potential to bring them on as mining zones is also improved both economically and from a time perspective.
- If I answer your question in the second part, which was talking about you know, how do we see the expansion?
- Well, we've got the ongoing growth drilling to the end of June, I think we're looking to still complete, you know, 40,000 meters of growth drilling in the second half of the year. But beyond that in FY23, we have a very substantial growth drilling program planned again, so that's incredibly exciting.
- We have the feasibility study coming in and again, although that pre-feasibility study was centred around 2 million tonnes per annum of ore, we did flag that the feasibility study would be looking to take that up to around 3 million tonnes per annum. Now I think 3 million tonnes per annum is about as much as a single decline access can do.
- So, look it could be a little bit over, a little bit above. My sense is, you know, that will come up and that could be as much as a 50% increase in mining rates which is, you know, that in itself is tremendous growth.
CONTD..
Sign In
Follow the stocks
