ORE has always stated in their reports that it takes 3 years for...

ORE has always stated in their reports that it takes 3 years for a harvest pond to become harvestable. Maybe this is the reason that they cannot take the plant to nameplate capacity because they do not have the ongoing product capacity. I would hazard a guess that they are in go slow mode with harvesting just to make sure they do not have a period where they have no harvestable ponds for 6 months or more. They could easily ramp up harvesting rate to increase product throughput but then would have to sit down and play cards while they wait for new ponds to come on line. Big stuff up in evaporation times which they are getting punished for now but time will see that problem sorted with the extra ponds. This means that REAL Stage 2 capacity will take many years from now to come into production as the new ponds are only what was really needed for stage 1 to work properly.  

If their only problem is time, then that is far better than admitting that the plant needs to be shut down and modified at a huge cost and another cap raise. That would be a real share price killer.