Production Rate Estimator

This Metal Production Estimator App allows the user to take a Resource or Reserve estimate and conceptualize a potential production scenario.  This would use a user defined mine life to determine the processing rate and annual metal production. The App also estimates the insitu rock value and total contained metal in the Mineral Reserve.

Example

Say you have a gold deposit with a Resource of 50 Mt with Au grade of 1.5 g/t and Ag grade of 20 g/t.  What might this deposit produce?   Here's how to check this.

Lets assume we can convert 80% of the Resource into mineable Reserve.  By mining the better grade ore we can increase the head grade up by 20%.   So the Reserve would now be 40 Mt at 1.8 g/t and 24 g/t respectively.  This would equate to an insitu rock value of about $326/tonne and 2.3 million ounces of gold insitu.

We might expect a heap leach recovery of 75% on gold and 60% on silver.

If we target a 10 year mine life, we need an ore processing rate of 4 Mt/year (or about 11,000 tpd).  That's a fairly big operation.  This processing rate equates to metal production of 173,000 oz gold per year and 1.85 Moz of silver.   This size deposit may have interest for a mid-tier producer.