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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr. Aloha who wrote (55592)	1/20/2008 3:00:36 PM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 78409

I agree with most of what you say, but don't be surprised if they shelve the zinc electrolytics, which do promise to be cheaper throughput, perhaps as low as you say, for a float-zinc silver ship and smelt op? Why? Because it was in their plans from the start as an alternate, and it is 3 times cheaper for start up. No huge zinc plant and all those cells, and lectrics. If they can save 250 in financing, it will be in this market, a lot less scary. Diff in price of zinc is 8 cents less a lb. for capex. How much to produce zinc con at that capex? Worst case <20 cents. And they can do reverse flotation to get rid of their carbonates and zinc float, I mean sink float to further upgrade the zinc. At 770 a tonne zinc to smelt con, (and its going up with oil prices) we get 34 cents to smelt, with shipping extra. So say, 920 to smelt and ship, we get 41.4 cents to smelt-ship con, and 6.4 cents for Capex. Mining-milling cash is cheap. 15 bucks max/ton. @ 154 lbs per ton = 9.75 cents/lb. Total 57 cents. Guaranteed they make 28 cents/lb. Then there is the silver. Mining and milling the same, so lots of bucks. IFF it is easy to con and leach/smelt. Silver should be floatable. Con would be 360 oz. Tbey have two ways to go here. CN of silver with Merril Crowe, or nitrous-sulphuric leaching. They could even nitrate leach. Chlorine has been tried in the past. All of these depend on metallurgy. I would say $150 a ton to leach con. (50 tons per day) Costs, all up - $3.70 an oz for silver. IFFEN they has enuff. It might make sense to do it two stage to get going. Zinc float and silver then build the lectro litics when they have "proved their case". **********************************