Agoracom,

Could you pass this note along to NOT for me.

If everything that could possibly go wrong happened you might hit 110 days. The reality is that exploration activity in general is slowing down and labs have excess capacity. Turn around times is now a week to two weeks vs months. Sure there are special cases such as chromite, rhodium etc where there is very little lab capacity but for most precious and base metals assay turn around is happening much faster. For a customer that is going to ship them material for the foreseeable I would expect the labs give you better then average turnaround.

As to the rest of the explanation for the delays it’s totally bogus. Sure the worst case scenario might happen once in a while but for the most part the core comes in from the drill every shift, is logged as it is received then sampled, boxed and sent out as space on flights becomes available. It hits town and gets sent out by courier that day or the next and is in the lab a day or two later. Give them a couple of weeks for assays, QA/QC checks, and data entry. So say 3 to 4 weeks from drilling to being in the database under normal situations. Any geologist or company that can't manage the regular flow of core from the drill to drill shack, samples to the lab, and the assays from the lab to the office better than they describe should be fired or acquire the talent they obviously need.

Is it reasonable for NOT to hold back assays and release them as batches or for strategic reasons? Sure it is but don't treat us like idiots. As to the 'Arn't Yah Dumbbb!' IR message I guess that it does indeed convey what NOT thinks of us 'retailers'.

... Been There