silver grade, page-58

Hopefully management clears the air very soon for holders.

CCU have two different ore types, upper clay and lower dolostone Saprock. They were going to process the upper layer in the first three years as the lower strip rate, free dig and no crusher needed was lower cost option. Spend more money on crusher and ball mill in latter years, projected grade for the first few years was over 90 g/t, all good at this point. Early production they got alot more material in the upper layer that required crushing, installed crusher, then this problem either still existed or got worse as they talked about needing the ball mill circuit. My guess is oversize material is dilution material and/or there is greater variation in this upper clay layer that their drilling or sample process didnt account for. Qtr report had about 70 g/t for feed, assuming this is now the norm instead of 90 g/t then production and the jorc could get a trim in a similar ratio. Not helping but thats my guess. Management should try to claw some of the grade reduction back with more capacity if they can.

ASX and banks get very excited about these issues as it points to issues with jorc assumptions they used and who and how this way all put together, and the forward sales. Expect CCU will dig themselves out of trouble but wont be pretty short term.

Not a good look for asx Silver bulls unfortunately after Macmin, SVL, MAR and other maybies on the bandwaggon have failed to fire. I dont want to stick the boot in, but, if your keen on a good selection of silver stocks the asx is not the place to be.