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Gold/Mining/Energy : PolyMet Mining Corp POM.V (was Fleck Resources) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: dean poets who wrote (656)5/14/1999 11:31:00 PM
From: Shaun M. Dykes  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 708
 
Should do your homework a little better. Currently the rock is averaging around US$14/tonne recovered. Due to the different metals in the concentrate the price varies. With a standard mill operating costs for this type of operation are usually $4 to $6/tonne and that includes metal recovery from flotation concentrate (sx/ew). Polymets extra cost is due to the wide variety of metals within the concentrate and the cost of the pressure oxidization or bacteria leaching. Concentration ration is approximately 25:1. So doing a little math. The concentrate is worth approx. 25*14=$350/tonne and it costs $100.00 to $150.00/tonne to produce (25*4$ to 25*$6). So as you can see there is way more value in the concentrate than what it costs to mine.
Very difficult to fund copper only projects due to the large surplus of copper, i've got all sorts of projects with +1% Cu as well, but a mixed base and precious metal deposit has much better chance of succeeding with financing because of the variety. In fact most major companies like to have multi-metal deposits as it gives them a lot of flexibility as rarely are all metals depressed at the same time. Look at palladium and platinum versus copper and nickel as an example.
The bottom line of this is that there's a large deposit with confirmed grade and excellent recoveries to concentrate. The next step in the development is to determine the additional cost of the concentrate processing on a tonne of ore. Remember the additional processing is only on the concentrate and so involves less tonnes and a smaller plant. Hope this helps everyone.