Telfer Mine Life - 20 years is being suggested ...?

[Hydrogen]

Rumours seem to be swirling around, that the 'Greatland people' 'believe' Telfer has not 5 years mine life, but maybe 20 years... Here are a few separate apparently independent sources that appear to be from Telfer workers, following meetings in late November :

I can't vouch for any of this - but I have put feelers out to try and verify: I guess the key question is motive - Why would a poster on Antipa Hot Copper BB start swinging his axe posting what some argue as "ramps' about Greatland - that is a fair question?

Paddy observed this and was chatting to a poster Happy Da and queried this unambiguous statement ( made a few weeks back) :

I know memories of Joe Bass rightly gives many the fear... ( I cannot help wonder if that was one of GH's LSE accounts - Apparently he had 'multiple' social media accounts... )

but this guy seems interesting. https://www.lse.co.uk/profiles/johnb31/

And then we have our resident Telfer contact Shiny -

Maybe @shinybits can offer thoughts? I asked my friends to do some digging.

[Shinybits]

My understanding is that employees were indeed told there was a 20 year plan… BUT that is reliant on Haveiron’s dirt so it’s 20 years for the plant, not necessarily processing its own resources. It was probably a statement to foster some confidence in job security to help allay any fears there may have been regarding potential layoffs or redundancies (which is not to suggest it isn’t true).

There is also confidence in the potential utilisation of other nearby deposits acquired in the purchase as well, given the hungry mills can process a lot more dirt than can be brought from Haveiron, but I wouldn’t think that would be near term as getting Hav online would surely be a priority.

[Rotherby]

Thanks again Shinybits

Until GGP have done the work on finding out what there is at Telfer your statements seem correct, but the impression that Shaun gives he things there is a lot of life in Telfer mine.

Based on his previous purchases of assets from Majors, that even though they all had short mine lives (approx. one year), they continued to find ore and process it for at least 10 years.

I can well understand why a major would take there eyes off the ball, as they have 'even' better opportunities in other parts of their businesses, the ROI where end of life mines is concerned most likely cannot compete with other projects.

Small companies (tongue in cheek 1 billion £UK small!!!) are lean without the overheads of the likes of Newmont or Barrick.

Next year I expect the life of Telfer mine will be at least 5 years and by the end of the year, past 10 years, I am looking forward to seeing the next years development.

I am sure we will be looking at this on Saturday in Derby, an interesting meet at a great venue, looking forward to seeing quite a few of you there. (PS there are a very few spaces left)

[Hydrogen]

Thanks for clarifying Shinybits, that makes sense and ties up with the SRK report.

I thought this comment was interesting from Johnb31

"When they were bought out the management changed and the priority was to not spend money. One been West Dome deeps that for many years has thought to be a mirror image of the previous underground main dome orebody. Over the year's Newcrest has been developing this drive on and off. That's what we are waiting for now the results of the drilling"

A mirror image makes perfect sense from a geological perspective.

I recall reading somewhere that one single reef that was just around 1m thick - the M40 maybe? - was such high grade that it produced something like 30% of all of Telfer's gold. If we can find that repeated under the West Dome that would be incredible.

This is Telfers production over the past 25 years. Only two years out of 25 were reported as sub 300koz.

[ManFromUruguay]

"This is the best time to own Telfer since 2005" Quote Shaun Day. I hadn't realised that in 2005 the Production went from c 200k ozs to c600k ozs wow!

I cant imagine that repeated but it is some statement of confidence from Shaun and must have substance to it

GLA MFU

[Rotherby]

"This is the best time to own Telfer since 2005" Quote Shaun Day. I hadn't realised that in 2005 the Production went from c 200k ozs to c600k ozs wow!

I cant imagine that repeated but it is some statement of confidence from Shaun and must have substance to it

GLA MFU

Brilliant, lets hope we can increase the production by a factor of 3, in 2025, that would be Bonanza time

[poniexpress]

Hydrogen,
Thank you for your many informative posts on many issues.
I was contemplating doing additional research on production potential at Telfer based on the First Telfer Gold GGP RNS.
As a starting point I wanted to find out Telfer gold production figures since my last research on Telfer in 2015/8'ish.
Hey ho. You have published the figures here which saves me a lot of time.
My thoughts on this topic (Telfer mine life) completely support the claims that Shaun has indicated. The fact that Bamps (whom I also respect/trust implicitly) is also excited by the potential drill results etc in the Main Dome Deeps (amongst others) that were done in the past and have not been officially reported yet as far as I know by either Newcrest or Newmont augers well for the future of Telfer.
I have no doubt Shaun is conversant with the situation with the due diligence involved in the deal between Newmont and GGP.
I think the future is ever brighter for GGP.

[Irish24]

As long as Telfer pays for Havieron to be completed and is there to process the ore then anything else is a bonus... a welcome one.

Seasons greetings to all, especially to Shaun and the Greatland Team and their new colleagues.

[Fredericksson]

Based on this mornings news update, Telfer could be good for another 10 years. Plenty of time to get Havieron up and running

Telfer gold resource - 3.2M Oz
Initial mine plan production - 374,000 Oz over 15 months
Gold mine life - 3.2m / (374,000 / 1.25 years) = 10.7 years

[Rotherby]

I cannot find the new post button so found next best thing

We had a few posters as well as Shinybits that ported here

But no news from the farm , an update would be nice even if it is only to say 'we cannot post at present'

[Shinybits]

As far as I know, staff are still being told the expected mine life is 20 years, presumably including an expectation of further discoveries from ongoing drilling and extension of the underground mine. A new cutback in the pit is just being started now I think, or very soon.

They have just had the first full dual train maintenance shutdown under Greatland’s ownership, and even with that down time and with February being a short month, still produced an obscene amount of gold for the quarter over and above the 15 month plan projected on the plant acquisition. Pretty impressive.

I believe the uplift for TSF8 is going well, (paid for by Newmont as part of the deal) so there will be plenty of tails capacity in the short to medium term, and there’s even talk of another lift on TSF7 at some point, even though 12 months ago Newmont said it would never ever ever be used again

The crushers are going well, there a couple of belts being replaced shortly, the copper press is also going well. The mills are purring along, but one of the motors on T1 ball mill got replaced in the shut. It apparently has been chewing through brushes in a couple of weeks when they should go a year or so, (the electricians could be more specific) so the spare motor was fitted. It’s a good 50 odd tonnes (2 per ball mill) so not a small job.

Apart from that the plant is showing the benefits of all the money Newmont spent on bigger projects during the downtime forced by the tails dam issue last year.

Greatland is rumoured to be perhaps lacking somewhat in looking after their staff (most important resource you’d think), but I don’t know how the turnover compares to previous.

Wet season is finished, so no more hold ups from lightning and rain causing chaos and closing the road out to Port Hedland for days (or longer) at a time. That’s the one and only road in and out of Telfer, and it’s 150 or 200kms of gravel, before you get to the bitumen, so doesn’t take much rain to get the road closed to protect it.

It will start raining again December or January. Now that it’s well in to autumn the temps are dropping, some days it’s even down to 35 (Celsius), so it’s lovely just now.

[Hydrogen]

Thanks for the Update SB. Great to hear. from you again!

[Rotherby]

Thanks very much Shhinybits for the update I hope you did not mind my request.

It is frustrating not having information but you post help.

[Rotherby]

Thanks very much Shhinybits for the update I hope you did not mind my request.

It is frustrating not having information but you post help.

[Guy Shelby]

The grinding belt issue sheds some light now on what Shaun had previously stated that the crushers were only operating together at about 85% efficiency.

Can’t be certain but certainly does point to a mechanical issue such as the belts that would cause that amount of inefficiency in the coarse grinding.

All other situations that could cause inefficiency can be sensibly ruled out, such as the operational parameters for obvious reasons from previous use supplying sag mills to churn out 23mtpa over and above nameplate capacity.

Even a drastic change in different ore feed of rock hardness and size variability would not create that amount of disparity that would cause the grinding circuit to not operate within its expected parameters.

So appears could well be a relatively easy fix and not an inherent issue altogether.

[Shinybits]

I don’t know to what capacity the crushers are operating or specifically why, but some common reasons for reduced tonnage can include such things as belt issues, as you suggest. The belt can be physically damaged and they could be operating on reduced tonnage until it can be replaced. It’s better to run on reduced capacity for a short period than no capacity at all, waiting for a better time to change a belt. Also when you have a worn mantle on a crusher, you either over stress it because the concave is worn the wrong shape, buts big load (and heat) on the very expensive crusher motor, or you run a bigger gap, this lets larger rocks through which, at full rate of 22-2400 tph is more likely to lead to blocked transfer chutes, causing more downtime.

So it’s a fine balancing act. The crushers can generally crush I think about 400 tph more than the mills can grind, if I’m not mistaken, so you could argue there’s a little leeway. But of course you want to keep a decent crushed stockpile so the mills can continue to be fed during any crusher circuit outages.

Hope that all makes sense, I don’t know what the specific circumstances are but just pointing out some possible reasons for running at a reduced capacity for a period of time.

[Rotherby]

Thanks again, I have arranged meetings of investors on 24 April and 31 May what a pity you cannot attend as in UK if you would like to update us my email address is ggpmidsmeets@gmail.com
It will be appreciated

[Rotherby]

Thanks again, I have arranged meetings of investors on 24 April and 31 May what a pity you cannot attend as in UK if you would like to update us my email address is ggpmidsmeets@gmail.com
It will be appreciated

[Guy Shelby]

Thank you for your insightful response shinybits, very helpful.

So when Shaun spoke of being able to run one train at 120% supplied by both crushers it would appear to be then to just overcome the belt issue in the interim as it certainly implied a bottleneck pre milling exists or existed.

So with those max crush throughput rates you state, it is a very high likelihood that the rationale for going to a single mill processing train in the long term will be ‘solely’ based on economic performance. With ideally one crusher working at or near capacity to supply one mill. With the flexibility in the whole beneficiation process to increase or decrease throughput rates depending on ore feed. Running these things below capacity is not efficient as we know, so it is really encouraging to have a better understanding now from Shaun’s comments.