Carl:I too heard about the 10,000 tons a day number, and while I certainly hope they can do that tonnage, I am concerned that the need to grind the ore and bake the result in a reduction oven may limit the throughput in relation to economics and other factors. I don't know how long it takes to grind and bake, but I'd speculate that it takes more than a few minutes.
It's not the end of world, though. If the company starts out with only 200 tons a day, with 3 oz/ton in gold and gold equivalents, that's some 200,000 oz a year in PMs, a respectable amount for any beginning junior gold company, and its unnecessary to produce millions of oz a year off the bat to prove the concept. If Naxos were able to do a thousand tons a day, we're looking at a million oz a year, a grand slam home run for any beginning junior gold company.
If everything proves out, I would guess that any mine would be modular in design - to expand, you add more attritors, reduction ovens and so forth, parallelling existing infrastructure. This modular design would also facilitate easy maintenance - you simply build more than you need and cycle each one through its maintenance routine, thereby keeping the requisite number online at any time.
Rand |
