@PamplonaTrader I was having a chat with my father again over...

@PamplonaTrader

I was having a chat with my father again over dinner last night and cleared up the question of the recoveries.

He was referring to Net Smelter Return.

He said for lead zinc concentrates 55% is the sort of number you would need to apply if you are doing financial modelling.

I found also found a paper that suggests the number to be even lower for ore of lead and zinc.

https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/GC/article/view/3740

“In sulphide deposits in which the economic metals are principally copper, nickel, molybdenum or platinum group metals, a mine's receipts (the NSR) usually correspond to about 56%-60% of the gross value of the metals contained in the ore. This figure drops to around 40% for ores with significant quantities of lead or zinc. The presence of gold or silver in the ore will generally increase these percentages.”

He told me when they used to have McArthur River they had all sorts of problems getting the ore to produce out of the smelter so needed to grind it very fine to get good smelter returns. The cost was more energy.

So the smelting properties of the ore determine its payabilty per dry tonne along with mining, processing and transport. That was what he was referring to when I mistakenly used the word recovery in my post above. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I haven’t looked at your financial model again but if it’s not taking into account the NSR per tonne it probably should be. Esh