RE: Large enough to sustain long term production?5 Jun 2020 12:31
These were the comments 1Plus1 sent to the website with regards to the article. The comments were visible on the article until recently, but have been somewhat mysteriously removed.
I posted the following comment on to The Armchair Trader website and the site deleted the comment!
Hello Vanya, I read your article with interest as an investor in Greatland Gold. As an "award-winning financial journalist", presumably you would be amenable to revising your article to take account of factual inaccuracies in your original piece? For example:
1) "it is already considering selling its stake to Newcrest". This is not correct. There has been no public release or comment by the Greatland management that it is considering selling its stake to Newcrest, nor has Newcrest suggested that it will buy out Greatland's stake.
2) "Telfer itself doesn’t refine its gold on the site but only roughly processes its raw material into a far cheaper substance, a gold-copper concentrate". This is not correct. Telfer produces gold doré which is refined by the Perth Mint. The value received will be spot price, less a small margin for the refiner. A secondary output is the concentrate, which is exported.
3) "Newcrest recently conducted two drills on the site and was sufficiently enthusiastic about the results to initiate two more and then another two exploratory drills.". This is not correct. Newcrest has been publishing results twice every quarter, and presently has eight drill rigs operating on site continuously.
4) "to build a deep mine the ore needs to exceed 2.5g of gold per tonne of raw material". This is not correct. Current block-cave mining techniques can profitably mine much lower grades. For example, Newcrest's Cadia East underground mine with mineral resource 700m to 1,500m below the surface, with blended average resource around 0.40g/t Au and 0.26% Cu, operated with AISC ov 5) "It is telling that Newcrest itself explored the site in late 1990s and early 2000s but didn’t proceed with any projects". If you read the actual Newcrest reports, which it doesn't sound like you have, you'll see that Newcrest drills failed to go deep enough and penetrate basement. The Newcrest report recommended revisiting the Havieron site, but it appears this was forgotten about with the passage of time. Modern drilling technology has overcome this issue.
6) "The mine is still relatively far away from any export infrastructure and the end product will be the relatively cheap gold-copper concentrate". The Havieron site is just 40km from Telfer infrastructure, which has it's own landing strip - product can be very easily exported. As previously mentioned, the article erroneously overlooks the gold doré produced by Telfer and sold to the Perth Mint - the value received will be within just a percent or two of spot values.