Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
There was nothing disgraceful about any comments that kev posted. All he did was mentioned that CB had told him that FQ had already spoken to him about the licenses. That could mean absolutely anything, kev didn’t imply FQ already wanted to buy them!! As usual many jumped straight on it accusing insider knowledge and preceded to attack kev personally and his professional integrity, for which these posts were all rightly removed including his own attempts to defend himself and also removing his original comment, which to be fair he maybe shouldn’t have chosen his words better, that’s all!
Thought of a great analogy to help describe what they are trying to achieve with ongoing optimisation of plant and op costs at BR for any not sure what’s currently going on.
Compare the initial CapEx payback mining phase Xtr need to provide with winning a standing quarter mile race on a nice sticky track.
What they are doing now is throwing on some Micky Thomson drag slicks, throwing away the Edelbrock finally, and replacing it with a Holley, some open headers, tuning, tweaking launch rpm, shift points, tire pressure etc, I could go on! It’s all about the launch and first 60ft, hook it up off the line, and half the job is done! If that doesn’t quite give you a desirable E/T then you’ll just have to look into throwing on a huge blower. ‘ie’ go down the further pre concentration route by looking into different ore sorting tech on that high grade, or do a bit more drilling to increase the resource economics and hopefully with a strong tailwind in the form of a rising copper price to finally get it over the line.
‘That’s’ how to get a result in Aussie Gw 👍
Great way to talk about cars too without anyone being able to get too pi55y. Anyone don’t understand the analogy you probably drive an suv or a Tesla 😎
Hey Dani
Doesn’t make any sense does it.
Billions have been wiped off AIM company values since ‘21. Most of those companies that would also include Xtract, that have suffered the worst rerating are those that have had no regular income to underpin a fundamental level of market capitalisation.
If Fairbride plant had not been severely delayed by port closures due to lock down, or any other hypothetical reason that would mean that start up and initial production would have occurred up to 18 months prior. The damage to share price may not have been so bad. Unfortunate timing.
Come full audit in Q2 when the company will have another chance to convince the market with transparent actual cash positive position that will hopefully set Xtract apart from the majority of its peers in this currently abysmal sector. Some positive sentiment might return if hasn’t by then as are sure signs it has bottomed already.
Plenty of news to follow on where and how the treasury has been spent on advancing projects.
>>>Works continue to add value in copper as we coin it in in gold.
We can continue to split hairs on what will be actual cash in bank from profit share will be. But whatever it is I think it is safe to say they will not be saving it up for a rainy day!
Allocating any funds in treasury for ongoing asset development. Putting the cash straight to work, to advance its ‘various’ surface activities, resource modelling, metallurgy etc all toward a glut of studies that will drive projects forward in ‘24 for all the assets in one way or other hopefully.
No reason whatsoever to think work has come to a grinding halt just because news has dried and cb has gone quiet.
Whatever the thoughts are, on what has transpired before to leave the share price where it is now, there is no disputing how the company is positioning itself toward being a sustainable mining company. No it’s not there yet, with potentially a further raise or two possible for major exploration drilling over next couple of years. Kakuyu?
Any ‘major’ Xtract shareholder value, will be more likely returned from ‘actual’ M&A activity through a likely asset sale. Not from a derived target price that could and will be influenced by external factors along the way with the dilutive effect of any further raise to consider too.
Bottom line there will be more positive fundamentals by end of Q2 to underpin a certain level of share price mid term if the board can gain shareholder confidence again and attract investment when the time is right to.
Until proved otherwise that for me appears to be where we are at.
To follow up on FB, two thirds of the whole Identified resource is already amenable to open pittable depths regardless.
Mining consultant Daan van Heerden of Minxcon had said: "The Manica study has produced a robust project targeted toward simplicity and predictability. We concur with managements approach to the concession and agree that the previously announced hybrid approach might have led to enhanced capital and operating risk."
Basically if they can continue to find shallow gold to keep surface mining operations going, it will be relatively risk free, a license to print money, especially if a new sulphide plant can still be justified. They may simply not need to go underground to exploit oxides as the ability will then exist to process outsourced ore, so is a great opportunity for Xtr to increase its interest with an investment in any new or extra plant mods with any of the extra risk mitigated against, by not digging deep.
??
Much of Manica’s ore is shallow to surface, including the transitional and those deeper sulphides that are still within open pittable depths. It is not as though that any of the deeper sulphides can only be accessed through an underground operation. The more shallower oxides that are identified and can be exposed from push backs of the current pit it will naturally allow deeper access.
From ‘23 full report-
Studies are on the way to define in-pit oxide feed material together with general exploration aimed at identifying new additional oxide or sulphide material. We are conducting test work to determine the overall recovery for the transitional material and are optimistic that the cut-off between oxide and refractory sulphide will not be night and day, but gradational.
So I’m not so sure Bob. One day it may go underground but I don’t see how they are considering it yet or for some while.
RNS preceded the Manica DFS release
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/XTR/manica-project-strategic-and-progress-report-owa0y87hq9jlyne.html
Hi captainbob.
Manica DFS went under a review by the board to optimise it, shortly after its release. Although it concluded that it will not change anything, it was decided to develop Manica solely on an open pit basis and dismissed the concept of a high grade open pit operation followed by an underground mine. This decision was based on the need in underground development for crown pillars which would sterilise a significant portion of the resource. Weak wall rock conditions underground were expected to require back-fill which would have a serious adverse effect on underground operating cost.
This would likely be the case for the current ore reserves including the satellite deposits too as it was stated as Manica and not specific to Fairbride.
Was in an early RNS, I doubt if this has been re reviewed since.
If it has I have not seen specifics other than Manica being described as an open pit and underground project.
Can any others comment on this?
It’s always a delicate one to comment on when shares have suffered more dilution. Of course CB is always going to benefit at the expense of others but ultimately because of it, funds will be secured with the take up his, and ‘all’ options so further ‘necessary’ technical work can get done, so moving another step forward.
As MrT has pointed out zero developments have been seen in ‘23 so the incentive price for taking up any offer of options was always going to cause contention.
If of consolation CB, along with all existing holders have suffered the same dilution that an investment case will now be based on in terms of return on an asset sale in the future for example.
Yep, some definite shoots of the recovery appearing. Just need the Chinese economy to step up that will see the demand needed that will really tip the balance. At the moment it is them that are generally limiting any real upswing in base metal prices prompted by the lack of stimulus measures that have been hoped for there.
oh billy i think you are mistaking ‘those’posters that pop up whenever cb gets ****ged off with regular contributors. after all there isn’t a day that goes by……. thing is, you should see what it feels like when you try and post something positive about cb 😉
With a more recent rather cynical suggestion from an un named poster that CB’s arguable large pay rise over at XTR was in the same ball park as his options total for his latest raise here.
Hugely speculative of course, but it does show some ability of how he can rob Peter to pay Paul.
It depends how you look at it, it will not be in CB’s best interest to r@pe one of his own companies of it’s an assets and allow that company to flounder. It may be at a detriment to shareholders but could ultimately give that lifeline ‘if needed’ that simply wouldn’t exist if were a standalone facing years of project stagnation where having no credible value added through project development inactivity will attract any take up of fund raising, even if it wanted to.
We have seen support across group level in a loan from GLR to XTR for £48k reported in XTR full report. With a more recent
All assets across the group of companies are managed individually with the right people in place with the necessary skill sets. Is highly unlikely CB has any day to day operational involvement of the various companies.
Having a group of companies, may seem excessive but gives those companies a lifeline for critical financial support when other options are depleted. There will be a certain strength at group level to keep the companies without a revenue ticking over so imo surviving the next couple of years should not be a concern.
Kwak > You have to look at the facts and see where this is going:
Ok let’s do just that!
Over the past 20 years, investors would have lost money in 72 per cent of all the companies ‘ever’ to have listed on Aim. With 49 Billion being wiped off company values on AIM in ‘21 alone due to the fallout from Covid. The resource sector was already in decline before then.
Exploration is probably the most risky sector of them all, where you can lose a lot if not all of your money as a result of projects failing geologically, or financially in some way or other.
Picking that winner is as rare as rocking horse 5hit!
Most fledgling or juniors in our sector rely a couple, if not only ‘one’ project to hang their hope on, having no form of income and having to rely solely on fund raising from the market, not only to pay for exploration but just keeping the lights on, month on month, year on year. Many of these are considered lifestyle companies.
Xtract at least, is not only diversified in the sizes of its exploration projects and in safe jurisdictions, but overall the company structure is well diversified being an exploration resource, development and a gold producing mining company.
There are no guarantees looking ahead, but there is a notable distinction about this current economic cycle. In previous recessionary cycles, there have typically been sizeable inventory buildups and an overabundance of supply. However, during this cycle, physical inventories across the metals sector, particularly copper, have remained constrained, caused by production headwinds.
When the sector finally turns, and it will. Compared to its peers, this company should be far better positioned to be able to attract new investors when buying returns.
Kwadoku once told us we should ‘ignore the fundamentals,’ that’s the craziest fact of all.
Interesting, the company have tweaked its business model and strategy on the website, maybe now reflecting its ‘ability’ to set its targets for acquisition higher, the result of the increased revenue from Fairbride you would think.
There is an ‘apparent’ difference in scale of the projects they seem to be now targeting.
Shifting from-
The company is examining a number of exciting opportunities in the ‘small’ copper and gold sector- June 22
The Company's aim is to identify ‘small’ deposits of 1-5 years production capability at a rate of about 50,000 tonnes per year. June ‘22
To now-
The company is focussed on identifying reasonably advanced resource projects, set in good mining jurisdictions and with economic projections suggestive of potential rates of return in excess of 25%. The vision remains for ‘medium’ sized projects, with the potential for rapid up-scaling and longer-term prospectivity and growth.-From current website.
No idea when the website see an update, could have been a while now. No mention of small scale anymore, such as ponsing around with the likes of Chongwe et al