I don't know their deposit, or mining method. You have to know to do a hypothetical feasibility. Even if you have to start from scratch that sounds kind of expensive. I know you can do it for cheaper up here and there are deposits. Land here in silver areas is hard to come by and money to explore with or develop in this country is even harder to come by. The new breed of investor is just not as knowledgeable. They all seem to think it is easier in some far away land , where of course, grades are better, regs are easier, the bigs one undiscovered and anyway you can do open pit SX/EW and you can't do that here. In reality this hardly ever the answer..
Our governments are in love with high tech, bending over backward federally and provincially to let high tech starters get all the grants and the easy road to public status. All kinds of smarmy pitches for foolish pie in sky no-market bio/software/retail gadgets in Kanata (Ottawa) with no-doubt eager Liberal party hacks talking up or killing deals. That money is all "connected". Wrong guy, and the idea it all filters over to a favourite, often fr. son of the patron saints of the fr. liberals.
Provincially, ten million dollar grants fly with abandon to schools that teach computer graphics while the budgets of the Geological survey of Canada is cut back to 500,000 a year. The suits are against mining. They think that industry is a step backward into the dark ages, its practicioners evil knee jerk reactionary engineers who don't care a wit about the safety or health of their slave labour. Sadly, that is only partially true.
The mining money has been going overseas since the late 70's. We raise it in Toronto and Vancouver to explore in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Honduras, Arizona, Colorado, Russia. Anywhere but here. But diamonds came back here! There are no jobs for local miners.
I would design mills far differently than the big boys seem too. What do they know that I don't? Apparently, as in SNC Lavalin, a dangerous money wasting non-engineering company, not a lot. Cullaton lake was one of their little carbon in pulp experiments that got barely 50% recovery. A flotation-gravity mill, far the cheaper, would have got 92%. I know, I have run the latter, and there are no elements in Cullaton or like orebodies that would interfere with the process. Hopebrook? Colomac? Underground bulk mine the high grade to .20 ounces per ton, semi-autogenous grind the iron formation rock to 250 mesh, gravity and float the sulphide/gold 1500 tons per day. A Profit made. Cullaton should have been 600 tons per day ballmill, flotation gravity, 0.42 recovered and cyanide the roasted and catalyticallty abated concentrate. Profit made. Costs - 50,000 per day with capital cost absolute max, recovery of cash 132,000 per day. Cullaton spent over 50,000 per day on 50 ounces per day recovered. They lost 25,000 per day. My baby sister could do better than that.
Today's "engineers" cannot see the forest for the trees. In the days of Flin Flon, a logger and sawmill operator, Pierre Beauchemin did far better. He operated, no bullshit and put in the best technology, because he knew where to find it. (the ore was as refractory as Cullaton Lake, for different reasons. Mills and Crowe, a real engineering team, solved that problem with the Merril Crowe process and cyanide recovery techniques.)
Whew!Anything else? Are these guys on the money with their process, politics, cost etc...? Who knows? Probably not.
Ask Hecla.
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