Re: ONE MORE TIME AND ONE MORE TIME
in response to
by
posted on
Jul 05, 2012 09:01AM
(Edit this Message from the "Fast Facts" Section)
One thing that needs to be straightened out is the nature of the "concentrate". They have 30,000 tons of partially depleted ore that has been run through the mill and had ~20% of the gold extracted. So instead of ~5 g/t, it's now maybe 4 g/t. That's where the $6M is- which is not in any form that can readily be converted to revenue any time soon. They still have to run it through the flotation circuit to reduce it to 3000 tons. It took 2 years to process the 30k tons the first time, and it will certainly take a while to reprocess it again but only after they have the flotation circuit installed and optimized. They speak of having the 3k tons ready when the leaching circuit is ready, but all these events (finishing the flotation circuit, permitting the leach circuit, installing the leach circuit, reprocessing 30k tons of ore) are still a long time away.
As far as true concentrate (as opposed to partially depleted ore), they should have concentrate from the 20% they did extract from the ore, which should be about $1.5M worth. Other than the small amounts of revenue reported, we don't know how much has been smelted and sold. We also don't know how "concentrated" it is, how much they have (though we have some idea of the value), how much has been smelted, or how long it will take to smelt. I also suspect that the smelting leaves behind much of the silver, which will have to be removed by a method other than just heating.
All in all, I wouldn't count on events at the mill causing a substantial change in share price any time soon. SFMI needs to drill, and drill now.