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Same here.
Not sure if I can post image links here but will try.
Two of the images are of the same place. It seems maybe this was an observation made and then pointed out with a flashlight. If you look at the first image here:
https://ibb.co/kcf4XHT
you will see two points indicated. These corrispond with the same two point indicated on image 2
https://ibb.co/bH9xzYr
Image 1 shows a white flashlight pointing to the wall on the left. If you look up near the reference arrows you will see a faint yellow colour on the surface. It looks like the flashlight was then pointed up towards that area in image 2. The reflections are increased now due to the flashlight beam location. Image three shows the same gold coloured area that is faintly seen on image one and the proximity of what looks li9ke a quartz vein.
https://ibb.co/NtVsJ07
Of course just because it is a golden reflection doesn't mean it is gold but you would question the posting of the images on twitter if were anything other.
If the image links don't work, take a look at the first and second images on the twitter.
Don’t underestimate the importance of this spoil heap. As minor as it may seem on the face of it, it is not a desperate quick fix to keep the share holders happy. It is a catalyst to exposure. This is a sentiment driven share and the nation is hungry for some feel good news. If Alba could get even £1m worth of Gold out of the waste heap. It proves that things have moved on massively since mining last took place. It would be a very news worthy story and it is that news worthiness (is that even a word?) that will be the key to exposing the opportunity to masses. It will be the mom and pop investors that grow this share and not the MM’s. This spoil heap, as insignificant as it may seem could be the catalyst. Welsh Gold is the jewel in the crown here, like it or not, that seems to be general consensus. Everything else (Graphite/Oil etc) just embellishes it. By showing the world we got a Million quids worth of gold from the scrap heap could trigger a modern day (shares) gold rush.
Difficult to say as there has been so little of it available. At worst it would be nothing so anything above that has to be treated as a bonus.
Just to clarify. That is 1000g (top end) per tonne of concentrate and not spoil. They were getting roughly 1% to 1.2% concentrate per tonne of spoil (7t produced 81kg) . So if the estimate of an average of 500g were achievable across the whole tip then my calcs work out like this. 4000t (spoil) x 1.1% (ave)= 44t of concentrate. 44t of concentrate at 500g/t = 22,000g . / 28.34 = 775 oz in round numbers. @ £1500 oz = £1.16m plus any Welsh Gold premium. A lot of assumptions here of course, mainly will they run all 4000 tonnes, will the average be achieved and so on. Then there is the cost of processing. I may be totally wrong in these figures so stand corrected if I am but this is how it looks to me.
I live not far from the Dolgellau gold field and have had the misfortune of having to deal with planners and authorities in this part of the world on more than one occasion. Basically, you are dealing with jobsworths. Historically IMHO they don’t care about how long it takes and what implications that has on the applicant. They are only interested in “a” covering their own backs, and “b” doing the job properly. In that order.
NRW have been under a great deal of pressure recently here in Wales. There has been a number of issues with contaminated water entering rivers, mainly from farming, granted. Then also issues with things like green algae in lakes in the region and so on. So, water quality is a very sensitive subject. Add to this recent bad press about issues at other mines (not precious metal) and you can see that they will make sure every possible test is done, every piece of paperwork is in place so as the receiving officer doesn’t put themselves at risk. That is the reality of what Alba are up against.
The flip side of all this is that it is starting to emerge that planning authorities and their apathy towards the applicant/developer is now starting to hurt progressive development. Especially in the affordable and new home sector. Whilst this has no connection directly with Albas activities it points towards these authorities also having to be more considerate to the needs of the applicants. It is a work in progress unfortunately.
The bottom line is that if you throw enough resources at an application, you will in the end generally come through, even if with some compromises.
Reading between the lines I feel that a big part of the reason the mine ceased production all those years ago was because the easiest Gold was being blocked by the ingress of water at the prime work face and as a private venture it was too much to take on the problem of dewatering. Add that to the price of Gold at the time and it made it nonviable to the then owners. Alba are very different, they have the best people on the job, they have a good working relationship with the authorities and the price of Gold is 5 times what it was when the mine was last commercially worked.
Yes the application could have been made earlier, but it wasn’t so we can only move on with what have today. No amount of moaning will change where we are at or speed up the process. NRW will give their consent as and when they feel they are happy that every box is ticked and if the compromise is to go around the side to get at the same target then that is the way it will be.
It has to be remembered that not every interested investor will watch or even be aware of Vox interviews. Whereas most will be alerted to or be looking at RNS's . There is a valid need both IMO.
Redecorating the toilet block and sorting the Christmas lights out. :)
Playing Devils Advocate here.
Is this possibly the reason that GF doesn't want to "show us the Gold" at this stage? Because Scotgold made this blunder and showed a ridiculously small result. Alba is in exploration phase so no matter what they are currently doing the extracted Gold will be minimal at this point. It has been bigged up by everyone but surely there is little chance of him showing up tomorrow with a pile of gold ingots on the table (or one even). If he presents a tiny bar or flakes of Gold guess what is going to happen? It will be a case of "is that it!!?" . So he is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
Maybe he has learned from the mistakes of Scotgold and is determined not to follow suit. So far it has been accredited that there is good amounts of Gold in the samples that have been produced. No matter how long it has taken. We (Alba) are fortunate to have Scotgold as a reference as to what not to do and if that means at times it is like wading through mud , then so be it.
..and Scotgold were carrying £24m debts and without a processing plant (£1.5m) when the programme was filmed in 2019.
Based on the historic average of 17g/t Au it would take 700+ tonnes of processed material to produce one standard ingot.
400 troy oz ingot = 12400g divided by 17 (average) = 729 t
continued ... . The most positive things here are that there is gold, and some of the results are showing as substantial in terms of spot samples (like a gold pan with many colours), the processing plant is set up well with negligible gold reaching the tailings and a great deal of the overburden is already moved, (shafts and corridors) I find this all very positive.
None the less, as this is still a sentiment driven share and I stand by what I said from a while back. That it will take serious media attention (BBC, ITV) to make this share move to where we all hope it should be.
I am very simplistic in the way I look at things. Life has taught me not to try to unravel complex metrics as I would likely be missing a vital ingredient so the result would be incorrect and irrelevant. I become an armchair expert and God knows we have seen enough of those during the pandemic. So in that respect I have to trust in the grades that are presented.
I believe that the standards that are being reported for up to 461g/t Au are industry standard and qualified by the assay house. They have to be otherwise we may just as well say it is a “big bit of yellow stuff in the corner of a box”.
Elir is correct in my opinion in what he says. The material that goes into the top of the crusher plant is classed as the measured gross weight. The gold content of that gross material is nett extracted gold weight. So the assay office say that with the grandfathers Stope sample. No matter what size it was when it went in the top it would produce the equivalent of 461g of gold per tonne of like material put through the plant.
That tonne of material as Elir says is potential gold bearing material. Think of it like this, we have probably all watched Gold Rush or similar and they are chasing placer gold. That makes it different in process but the same in principle. They move countless tonnes of overburden. Ground and debris that sits above the pay layer . (For Alba that is the shafts and corridors that need to be created that are the equivalent of overburden) Then when they get to the pay layer, they run that pay material through their wash plant. It is only that material that they count as tonnage. From that material they extract the gold and ascertain the grade of the material in grammes per tonne.
Coming back to the 461g/t Au. Think of this like a bottle of Whiskey. The Whiskey has an alcohol content of 40%. That is a measure which is industry standard and trusted. If you have a bottle of Whiskey, it is 40% when you pour it into a glass it is still 40%. If you took that glass of Whiskey to lab and tested it the volume would be 40%. So the measurement used is consistent.
This is how I see the grades that Alba are presenting in their RNS. Of course, that 461g result which may have come from a sample of less than 1kg is only representative of that exact sample and in order to achieve that high grade in volume, the volume would need to be the same quality as submitted in the original sample. That is a vagrancy of Gold mining (is it consistent?). Going back to the Gold Rush boys. They will dig virgin ground until they hit pay dirt, then they will pan it. If the pan shows an acceptable number of colours in relation to the running costs (Overburden removal, distance to wash plant etc), Then they will open up the cut. That pan could have contained the only Gold in a square mile, just as the small sample that was take from the Grandfathers Stope could be the only 461g material in the mine. Nobody knows and that is Gold mining. .. continued in ne
https://publicregister.naturalresources.wales/Search/Results?searchTerm=PAN-012667&pageNumber=1
Wow thanks scotalba. What a lucky person he is to have landed that. As Elir71 says , a dream of a job for someone in his field. What was that Sham69 song??..... "Hurry up Harry!"
Wasn't there also mention at some point in the not so distant past of a geology student sampling in the stream beds on a number of selected spots around the claim? I seem to remember something but forget where the details were and not noticed if we have heard any more of this.
elir71. careful if they are rich tea biscuits, you have to be quick when dunking them or it can get messy. :)
This is a phrase we see and hear all the time and it exactly what a lot of investors do. Some in more depth than others. So it is no coincidence that many people reading todays RNS would have turned to Google to try and establish what the meaning of “Concentrate AU (g/t) is.”
At that point it all gets more complicated because it seems like how long is a piece of string? Without diving into the numbers and connotations of what this could mean I feel it could be easily clarified by the person who wrote RNS.
A simple line to say. “To give context to these numbers the industry average for mined quartz vein concentrate is “XYZ Concentrate AU(g/t)”. XYZ being whatever the industry average is.
This would remove the need for us to scratch our heads and look for answers elsewhere putting 2 and 2 together and maybe coming up with 5.
The way I see it is this. Alba is a small company and as such private investors can make a difference. Especially when sentiment seems to drive the share price. So why not be a little bit more simplistic and gives us a comparison? If that comparison shows the results to be bad. Sobeit. It is what it is. At least we then know.
Currently we are struggling to understand these numbers. It is like inventing a car and saying it can reach a speed of 750 per hour. 750 what per hour? Miles, Kilometers, Inches?
Come on BOD don’t make it any more complicated than it needs to be. If GF can say “These are really pleasing test results and demonstrate how well our pilot plant is working now in producing gold concentrates with high recoveries.” Then he must understand what is pleasing and what is a high recovery, because he understands what it is being measured against. Please share that with us.
I and I guess many others here did not invest in Alba just for them to prove they can set up a gold recovery plant. That to me was a given. I invested because of the sentiment surrounding this Gold resource and the hope that through development of technology and increased gold values we could see this resource re-opened.
One sentence of quantifiable clarification is all we need and then maybe the uncertainties would be resolved.
Hopeful101. Think of it like this. You have an asset which is only valued at what you paid for it and at best what you have spent on it. That is the value of GL on the books at the moment. If you do no more with it , it remains at that approximate value. If you spend more on it to develop it then it should increase in value. However you have had to fund that increase from your pocket. So let us say that asset today is worth £100. If you spend £50 on it you would have hoped to make it worth £150. However your cash balance is down by the £50. Now imagine relinquishing 100% ownership of that £100 asset and retaining just 51%. You would be correct in assuming it is only going to be worth £51. However immediately the other 49% gets sold at a price much higher that £1 per % and spent on the development of the asset. If all things were equal then if for example the 49% was sold at £3 per % it could generate £147. If spent on the asset it would help the assets value to grow to £247. The £100 it started at and the £147 investment. Now go back to your 51% holding and it is actually now worth 51% of £247. So potentially worth £125. Meaning the value to you has increased but you have not had to fund it. This is a very simplistic way to explain it but it is the basis of the thinking. All speculative of course. By removing the liability of having to fund the project it eases the burden on Alba and accelerates the route to developing the asset. I may be wrong in this assumption but it is how I see it myself.
Link to public register if anyone wants to take a look
https://publicregister.naturalresources.wales/Search/Results?searchTerm=PAN-012667&pageNumber=1