A interesting retweet from the normal source Ryan Long23 January...

A interesting retweet from the normal source 

Ryan Long

23 January 2019 · 2 min read

Bluebird Merchant Ventures (BMV); announces an ambitious timetable for its Kochang and Gubong Mines

Gold production expected by the end of the year – how on earth can that timetable be achieved!

Bluebird Merchant Ventures (BMV.L) announced this morning that it is aiming to be in production at its Kochang and Gubong Mines, located in South Korea, before the end of the year. Eleven months to construct a processing plant and develop a mine is a very tight time frame. However, Bluebird has yet to receive the permits required to operate the mines, expected Q119, it is also yet to secure the funding required to develop the mine, order the mining equipment and plant components and even finalise the design or location of the processing plant, let alone dewater the underground mines, and refurbish access in to the workings.

With no direct experience of the mine permitting regime in South Korea, permitting could indeed be completed within the timeline expected by Bluebird, but mining permits generally take longer to secure than companies expect.

Even if the permits are obtained by the end of Q119, that wouldn’t leave much time to complete the plant design and location, finance the project, order the plant components and mining equipment, or dewater and refurbish the underground mines.

The plant construction timetable is even shorter, with construction of the plant expected to commence in Q319 and be completed with commissioning underway before Q419. That’s three months, at best, to build and commission a processing plant, a timeline that just does not seem realistic.

There are two key points to understanding why Bluebird believes it can deliver on such an ambitious timetable. The first is scale and the second simplicity.

In terms of scale, the plant Bluebird is expecting to build is small scale, possibly a single vat leach plant that the company can operate using whatever it can extract from the mine on a day-to-day basis. The plant would not have to be used at capacity, some of the vats could simply be left empty. Such a plant could potentially be constructed within six to eight weeks. Additionally, the small scale nature of the operation means that any fleet is expected to be made up of small capacity vehicles, that can be readily obtained from China in a short time frame.

As for the simplicity of the project, a vat leach plant would be easy to construct, require little power and would produce an aggregate not a tailings, making disposal easier, at lower cost. A vat plant is essentially a series of tanks, pipes and pumps so the requirement for plant items with long lead times is minimal. The rock the company expects to extract in the first two years of the mines life should be highly weathered and if crushing or milling is required, it could be done by small and readily available portable equipment.

Finally, the operation Bluebird is planning to develop this year is essentially a proof of concept and, as a result, funding the project should be a more simple process then a full scale operation, it could even, potentially, be funded by local debt.

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