Full production was only ever going to be achievable with the Ball Mill in place. Basically there wasn't enough fine material coming through to the process plant due to the oversize in the mined ore. The original mine plan called for the Ball Mill further down the track as it was expected that the ore produced early on would not need treatment in a Ball Mill.
Now with the Ball Mill installed they can get suitable ore into the plant at nameplate feed rate.
Silver production at nameplate requires a couple of months of feed heading into the circuit. Basically, the absorption circuit has to be "saturated" with silver before you start getting silver out of it at 200k ounce a month. The best way I can explain it is like this - you have a glass of water and you keep adding salt to it. After a time you can't add any more salt to it, so you heat it up a bit, which allows you to add more salt. When you let the water cool down again, salt starts dropping out of the solution.
CCU Price at posting:
22.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
