Mgt expect that the plant will be on-site and working "during June"......8 weeks give or take before it starts delivering bulk grades, (maybe that's being too optimistic). I would tend to think that perhaps it will be 3-4 months before bulk sample grades start being released...........
12th April ann "Bulk sampling plant constructed in Australia ready to be shipped and operational at Crown Ridge in June".
They have already defined a significant amount of sq meters of gold bearing conglomerate and have plenty of ground to test no doubt.........current extent of gold bearing conglomerate is defined as:
1100m east to west x 550m north to south x 70-90m thick......(42-54mill sq meters).
Importantly "the lateral extent of the conglomerate-bearing mineralisation is open in all directions".
They have mentioned they will report grades as grams per sq meter, this is unusual imo, but for a homogeneous "nuggety" conglomerate type play maybe the best way to go? Hence they will be running 125 sq m bulk samples to define global grade potential and provide a mineral resource estimate.
Pit 200 was 125 sq meters which delivered 75.05g of gold and 8.71g platinum..........(see link below).
https://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20170215/pdf/43g0lchnczvk1n.pdf
So.......is this going to prove economic? The conglomerate ground is certainly 'easy' to shift and there's plenty of it and its lateral extent is open in all directions. It requires only gravity processing so capex/opex will be lower end of the scale. Plus there's potential platinum and cobalt credits to throw in.......
Currently however I would consider pit 200 results as low to very low grade in the traditional g/t type metric. But not knowing the mass from which this 75g was assayed nor the Specific Gravity of the stuff all I can say is it looks promising, and finding the the hard rock source would be an excellent result.
However, they do expect recoveries to increase significantly.....
From pit 200 ann:
"While the initial results are very encouraging, the Company will witness significant increases in recoveries once equipment is upgraded"......
And from our latest news release........."The plant was engineered and fabricated in Australia to specifically maximise precious metal recovery in the soil types at Crown Ridge".
The "upgraded" plant is on its way......hopefully along with lots of 'upgraded' gold results.
The second half of 2018 could indeed prove very interesting for GMN.
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