Hi all. I'm an STA shareholder who are passive in Mt Gunson through an 8% stake of Torrens. STA was formerly Gunson Resources who did most of the previous work before selling to Torrens.
Given that the 2 main deposits are already JORC resources (albeit one needing an update), I'm as bemused as most of you as to why GBG would be proposing 6 years to mine.
The mineralogy is complex, with the cobalt effectively a contaminant making the resources sub economic using traditional methods. That's why the ore bodies are sitting idle (noting also one is reasonably deep). However Torrens have made significant advances testing new methods (actually old leach methods) with high success rates of economic recovery.
So I'm struggling to see how JORC resources with new recovery methods in trial phase takes 6 years to make a decision to mine. GBG have to prove the recovery methods and then from there the rest of it should be a standard mining plan so far as I can see.
So why 6 years? Maybe it's because they want more than the 2 proven ore bodies? There have been teasing signals over the years that there may be a whale sitting somewhere at depth but it's been very difficult to get close to. GUN formerly had a division of Xstrata spend millions on an earn in that they walked away from after the nadir of the post GFC commodities slump. With Carrapateena just down the road, Mt Gunson will continue to excite the dreamers until there's so many holes in it that there's no where left for a whale to hide.
GBG Price at posting:
2.7¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
