Right now, money mortars, Jesus Christ, gold is going off it's
head of bed. Just it's been amazing.
I've been on the find of brokers and everything flat out today
and we've finally got to the episode now the market's closed,
but you gotta get in early with these gold companies.
So mate, she's all go and we're JC on the back of your
sensational, unrequested from yourself life of Valley GC in
the world of corporate finance. Yes.
Why not continue this trend and do apparently there is some
stuff about underground mining, et cetera that you would like to
know? There is no so we're gonna
return the favour. I'm gonna reverse Uno you and
and I've got some questions about underground mining, which
you know, I've hear you're like you've said and a few like the
people we've had on the show to interview.
And and it's sort of, I kind of get it, but then also a lot of
it goes over my head and I imagine a lot of other money
miners are in the same position. So I would love to just get back
to basics and just to understand actually what you used to do.
But then some of your expertise that can help people read
between the lines or get in the weeds a little bit when sort of
reading through company announcements, things like that
as well. Oh mate, in the and look, I'm
happy to assist and in the true honour of an underground
episode, it's brought to you by Quattro project engineering, the
people that have invented most of the shit underground, the
mobile elevated work platform, the the fancy ones, the the
pasta version valves, the friggin the fan hanging systems
and have a look at this fly over JC.
They even do bloody paste plants.
Look at the lake cat, the lake cow paste plant like wow,
absolute picture of beauty and mate, it's a holiday.
You can go on and get paid for it 'cause you could get paid for
it as a Quattro employee. So if you love building shit,
designing shit and you're not a Dick head and you would like to
work for Quattro, right, Careers at Quattro, hit them up.
Hit them up like absolute bunch of GCS run by Jeremy Palmer.
Just absolute legends. Who wouldn't want to work with
them? So, and we'll do a rapid fire of
news at the end. Bit of bloody well mate.
I'm pumped up about gold at the moment.
This could be the. Starting to sound like me.
This could be the I think if you take a couple of zeros off the
market caps that you invest in, that's where my focus is at the
moment. Oh, Jason.
Oh, we'll. Get to that.
So we're gonna go. Cheers to the.
Last, the last bloody. See Maddie, Michael, JV Oh, no,
they're very. Cute.
Oh, Speaking of bloody, yeah. Speaking of what would you say
it's been a bit of a farming JV, right?
I'm just thinking of gold at the moment, yeah.
It's been great fun, so I've. Had I've had a bloody belter.
It's been cool. Haven't been judged for anything
I said. It's fucking.
Great. Oh, so let's let's get into it.
So we wanna go wanna go underground with you, Maddie.
So now you your old job, you're now, I know you actually were a
mining engineer to to start with and then move to a jumbo
operator. I was told that my decorum would
be more suited to the underground environment.
Politely. Politely, I love it.
Apparently dropping C bombs in the office wasn't cool and
punching computer screens wasn't allowed.
I say so a a jumbo operator, a a jumbo, what actually is it?
What and what is the purpose of it in an underground?
Mine. Oh.
So even after all this time, it's still a bit confusing what
I'm trying. To get the oh, I, I kind of, I
kind of understand, but just if we go back to basics, tell us
what is a jumbo? What is the purpose of it in an
underground mine? Well.
Why? Why Lucky?
There's some there's some videos that look, mate, can't say, oh,
I took them because you're not allowed to take videos.
Some of them might have, but there's jumbo think horizontal
then like development, you think horizontal production, you think
vertically. That's the best way to explain
it. So like, think of this bloody
iPad as the as the ore body just sitting there.
It's just this big vertical thing that's underground and
like you've got to the jump. The purpose of the Jumbo is to
develop all the drives, the tunnels that are going
horizontal and then you decline it gets you deeper.
And then when they talk production, that's when you you
get the rigs in to drill all the vertical holes to, you know,
excavate in between the tunnels vertically.
So that's that's so the purpose of jumbo is development and it
does 3 bloody does a heap of things like the main things are
scaling, bolting and boring. So why not bloody take you?
I've got a I've got a picture of 1 here.
There's a bloody a Sandvik, one of the new flash Sandvik jumbos,
twin boom jumbos. This is one picture looking out
of the cab bloody. There's your That's your two
booms. Those are the two arms.
Yeah, and that's like that's in an all drive at the moment, what
you call, you know, but you think of it as a tunnel, but
they're called drives or headings, OK.
And that's the the end of it. So and that's all your ground
support on the they call it the backs, the walls and the backs.
What the top is called the backs.
Fun fact, it's because when the draw, it was real small back in
the day and you'd like crawl through like just to fit a
person in like your back was touching the top.
So that was called the back. Oh.
OK. And then the front was the face
because your face was hitting the front.
And then obviously then you got your walls and down the bottom.
So if you're standing like you're the bottom, if you leave
a lump on the floor, it's called a toe because that's where your
toes were. There you go.
And then the row, the row of holes you drill just up, about
just up above the floor were called the knee holes.
That's where your knees were so. Very, very literal.
And then and then bore the middle outs, the guts the
because you yeah. So that that's all that
terminologies like from back in the day.
So and. Then so.
Those and so the jumbo does all that.
So the jumbo like puts the ground support up, bores all the
holes in the face, which you can see here.
Here's a development face and you can see all those holes that
are put in it. That's what the explosives go
into to take a, you know, 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 metre chunk out, blow
it up. And then you gotta put the
ground sport in and you that's how you advance the underground.
So I'll show you. This like for example, like
you'll use those booms, those arms to put the holes into the
face. Well, let let me explosives go
in there. Mate, I haven't.
I got some stuff for you, JC. Let's have a look.
Bloody. Yeah, for as I said, they do
scaling. That's one thing.
This is the argument between bloody North America and
Australia. Well, they have bolting rigs and
then scaling rigs. And whereas in Australia the
whole thing about a jumbo, here you have a jumbo that can do
everything and an and an operator that can do everything.
So this is an example of a jumbo scaling, so you can see it
bloody just pretty much drilling holes into the newly excavated
rock to drop all the loose shit off.
So that's like how you get all 'cause that loose stuff will
fall on someone's head otherwise or it'll bag up behind the mesh.
So you tap it and with the drill, with all the percussion
and force behind. It.
And that's it. And that's how you, and then
that's you use that to actually scale the face in front of you
to get all the loose shit off before you bore the holes in it
so it doesn't all fall on the frigging ground.
So you scale, then you put ground support, and then you you
start to bore holes. So here's an example of the OK,
putting the ground support up. So that's, you know, you use one
boom to lift the mesh up and then you jam it in and you
rotate it into position and then you use the other boom to, you
know, start drilling a hole. And so it's all like a big time
in motion exercise. So you know, when you're
learning it, it's the freaking hardest thing in the world.
And then, you know, you start getting all right at it, but
then after, you know, 6 to 10 years, you start really
perfecting the perfecting the art of it.
And that's why, you know, these people get bloody paid so much
to do it 'cause once you get really good at it, which is.
Just move. Quickly.
Well like it's like once I had six years on it so it took me 5
years to figure out bloody slow down and stop on trying to be a
bloody cowboy and a hero. So I had a good last year you'd
say I was friggin pain in the ass for the 1st 5 on it.
But then like if I if I stayed on it from that point I would
have started refining everything and got like shaving seconds off
every process and start really getting a lot.
Getting your straps, Yeah. Really getting a lot done with
like what the real experienced and switched on followers do.
I didn't really get to that get to that level as much as I
probably thought I did at the time.
So that's the that's the bolting side.
And then then if you look at the the boring side.
So this is a speed up version or found.
So that's both booms. Just drill and holes into the
face in a pattern to to blast it out effectively.
And you'll like drills the perimeter, which drills the
shape of it. And you've got to have your boom
angled correctly and going in the right direction to match
what the actual survey direction of the drive is and the height
and the width. And then at the end there you'll
see them drill like it's called a burn.
They'll drill a closed in pattern and put these rimas in
with which are the initial void. And then so chart the shop fires
come in, fill it with explosives and bloody sequence it so it
starts from the middle and fires into the void and then makes the
void bigger and keeps going till you've excavated this whole
thing. So it's the technical side of it
is trying to get the angles right and trying to, you know,
keep everything neat and tidy and and flowing.
But then you if you have multiple jumbos, you got
multiple operators with different experience levels and
the jumbo is the first is the thing that the whole mine
development follows and 'cause. You're literally at the
coalface. Cause the jump, you're the
jumbo's doing all that until that Jumbo's finished boring the
holes charge up. Can't get in there to charge it
until that. Is when you say charging.
Shot fire, Explosives. Explosives.
Yeah, yeah. And it's and, and until the till
the it's been blasted the bogger like the bloody thing with the
bucket on the front that can't bog the dirt.
So and yeah. And so then the jumbo can't get
back in till the spot till the bog is finished.
And like the whole and it's all that's how when we talk about,
you know, trying to Bellevue and Kathleen Valley and that trying
to target 300 odd metres per month per jumbo.
That number is dictated on how efficient that operator is on
the jumbo and every piece of machinery in person around them
trying to work for a 12 hour shift twice a day everyday and
all the management behind it to keep that whole process flowing
month on month to try and achieve those metrics.
So it's like we look at a number on a quarterly at what it is
just like it's a simple number. But what goes into making that
happen like the service crew that provide all the the
ventilation and the water to keep the jumbo going, the the
sparkies that have to provide the power to the jumbo and keep
extending because as the mine grows, like you have to keep
extending it and like the pumps. Are jumbo powered. 1000 Volt
electricity. So you drive it around on diesel
and then all the power that's on the surface like whether it's
usually diesel generators or gas fired bloody power station with
renewable backup, like all that is fed via 11 KV bloody
electrical cables underground and then distributed into drop
down to goes into like substations which drop it down
to the 1000 Volt. And then that 1000 Volt power is
in like orange cables distributed all through the mine
to a jumbo box. And then you'll have an extent
could have an extension cable coming out and that's what the
jumbo plugs into. It's called the Macy plug and
that that is how so yeah. So we're powered on 240 Volt in
this office. Jumbos are powered on one,
everything underground is powered on 1000 volts.
Wow. So that's and he might then they
can do like like cable bolts, for instance, like you can use a
jumbo to normally it only drills a you know, a three 2 1/2 meter
hole or whatever for your or 2.8m hole for your bolting when
you're bolting. Or you can open it up to drill a
four and a half metre hole for boring.
You have the longer jumbos like they can drill 6 metre holes in
one go. Like yeah, right, fix boring
things. But you can actually like drill
cable bolt holes with them, like use them as a production rig and
I'll show you, I'll show you. Bloody is a bloody cool.
Whoever whoever doing was doing this was a bloody bit of a Mad
Dog. Don't know it was, but like you
can actually, you can actually, you know, drill 6m holes, like
3M hole twice with a jumbo and attach a second rod onto it.
And that's how they drill the intersection cables.
So it's like a 6m hole. And this one here they're
actually using the one boom to drill through the other boom and
then like swapping the rod. So you'll see it here, the pace
it normally goes, I've speed it up just to shout and then you
can, yeah. So they're like, you can do so
many funky things with them. And yeah.
They're quite multi purposes. You sort of got one bit of kit,
or what would you call it, kit or is it a machine?
No, it's just a big bloody yeah, it's a machine.
It is a. That does.
Machine worth a couple $1,000,000.
Yeah, just just essentially does the development side of it.
But then, like you say, you've got other service providers and,
and machines and kit sort of OK, you do this place and the next
person's got to go and then the following person comes after
then and then it cycles again and again.
But just to have that, that rhythm and everything to be
going right and on time and all that.
It's, there's a lot of, I guess probably what I didn't
appreciate is how many it's not just say you and a jumbo going
boom, boom, and then it's all good.
Like there's so many variables that all have to be going right
and all at the correct time to keep that flow.
Going well you need you need the jumbo to do all that you need
the bogger to bog the dirt. You need the chart shop fires to
blow it up. You need the bogger to bog the
dirt out. You need the bogger to put the
dirt into a truck. So the truck takes that to the
surface and then you need a service crew that is sorting out
your water, your power, your ventilation infrastructure keep
that all going and that is just for development.
That is that doesn't say when I talk about production, I
actually found be rude not to show a Sambic production rig.
This was a public video, but that's what a that's a
production rig. So it's like, think of a jumbo,
but it's all drilling big, long, longer holes, fatter and they're
all vertical and sideways and they're the holes that are used
to take that all the ore out between the levels, which are
like, you know, the levels, the jumbo levels could be, you know,
20 metres apart or 25 or 15. These rigs come in all shapes
and sizes and they drill the pattern out to excavate the ore.
So all this development and decline and infrastructure and
all that, that is all there for the purpose to potentially take
out just this frigging gold vine and or hopefully there's
multiple Gulf veins on one level.
And so that is the difference between development and
production. So then so say you've developed
a level of the like a, like a tunnel basically.
So you've developed, you know, one here, 1 below it.
And then once you've finished the development with a with a
Jumbo, then this production rig comes in and starts going
vertically to excavate the the ore.
Yeah, it no, it just, it just drills holes vertically and then
the shop fires fill them up with explosives as well.
And that's how they blast out the production.
But like for a level, you know, you'll you'll come in, there'll
be the access to get in there. Then there'll be a stockpile to
put all the dirt. Then you need an escape way.
So you've got egress out to go up and down.
If there's a fire, then you've got could be a refuge chamber
Cuddy, then you've got could be some area for power or and then
you then you actually get into the the jump light level.
So when you talk about a level, there's a lot of little, you
know, cuddies everywhere for that serve a purpose for each
part of that cycle because you can't get the dirt out if you
don't have a stock ball to put a dirt, put the dirt.
You can't load the truck if you haven't lifted the height of the
backs for the bogger to lift the bucket up to tip the dirt into
the truck. Like there's all and that's,
that's what engineers do. And to design it all.
And usually the then the foreman's and everything, you'll
yell at the engineers. They're like, you didn't fucking
do this right. You bloody engineers don't know
how to fucking mind 'cause it's, yeah.
So it's, oh, it's such good. So many good personalities up
there. Friggin love it.
And then so, and this is the sort of imagine development and
stopping ore. So development ore ore sort of
refers to the rock that's getting taken out when the
jumbo's going through and the stopping ore is sort of post the
production rig and the explosives going in up
vertically that all that drops out is stopping ore.
Yeah, well, you think of say there's levels 2020 metres
apart. And so the the development ore
is just when, yeah, the jumbo excavates the tunnel through the
ore because you can't, the production rig can't get in
there to drill the holes through the ore body without the jumbo
creating the tunnel for it. To get in.
There, So yeah, development ore you're taking out, you know, 5
metres worth and then there's 20 metres of or above it till the
next level. So it takes a lot longer to
develop that the five meter chunk, whereas when you blow the
whole thing up, you've just got a shit load of dirt to bog.
So that's what they talk about and and that you can excavate it
skinnier because you don't have to put ground sport, no one's
allowed up in there like you can't.
Just gravity, right? All the.
Rocks. Well, no, you can't like you
Yeah, well you don't the jump. These are 5 meters wide to for a
purpose like you've got a because you're restricted by or
foot they 4 1/2. You can get 2 with these twin
boom jumbos. You can't get them really much
smaller because you can't fit the jumbo booms in there and you
and everything. So.
But when you mine a narrow vine, like they could mine in it like
2 1/2 meters wide. So your development ore is 5
meters wide. But if you got gold in the
middle, that means you got all that waste on the outside.
So. Whereas when you mine it 2 1/2
meters wide and hopefully just get the vine, that means you
your grade of that is a lot higher.
So you're stopping ore is higher grade because you haven't taken
out as much width. That's this is for narrow van
gold mining, but so that but and you get a lot more of it.
So that's why they talk about you want you don't want to be
just tracking all the development or up and not
focusing on the stopping or because the stopping or there's
more of it and it's higher grade.
So. Because you're targeting it.
Well, it's more targeted I guess, because you're aiming for
the the ore that. Oh, that, but the jumbo
development goes straight through the ore.
MMM 'cause that's where that gives you the The jumbo
development is purely for access.
Yeah, for the machinery to the end goal is taking that stop
out. Stop out.
That is, everything that goes on is purely for that goal.
That's what some places you forget, 'cause the jumbo's or
the might have been incentivized by doing more development
because I get paid more for it. And the focus, there was always,
always that culture of like you can't stop the jumbo.
But if the focus goes off production too much, yeah, the
primary purpose is getting the production or out to feed the
mill to all gold or float copper or so you could actually make
money. OK.
Because that was something I was, I kind of understood.
But now that makes a lot more sense.
And why? Yeah, you often say, yeah,
you're stopping all higher than your or ideally higher than your
development. All should be unless it the
hanging wall falls in and dilutes it and you've got a heap
of waste mixed in it and you've got to bog it out anyway.
Yeah, that's and that we can talk about later the dip and
foot wall and angles and recovery and.
All that, all that. You just bloody ask me whatever
you want to say. No.
So sort of moving on from that a little bit, how do you look at
an ore body and the mind design and trying to see if you can,
you know, hit all the targets or not?
Yeah. So you got to think of how much
when they talk about a 1,000,000 tonne per annum operation,
that's 1,000,000 tonne of ore. So if you've got add to grosser
for instance, that was, you know big, it's like AVMS deposit.
So it was like a big, big chunk of copper and it was like, you
know, 2030 meters thick. And on one level it would be,
you know, 100 and oh, it was 100 odd hundred 200 meters long.
So you you've got these. So a stoke there is like 20 by
20 at the bottom. And you know, it could be 50 or
60 meters high. Like it's a big thick chunk of
ore. And so you can, there's hyper
dirt to bog and yeah, you know, you can spend a month or so
bogging it till you finish. And a stoke might be 100 odd,
1000 tons. Whereas you go to a narrow vein
gold mine, you've got, there's one vein and you're like might,
you know, stoke might be 5000 ton or 10,000 ton.
So because you're doing these narrow veins, so you think of
how many Stokes you've got a mine that are 510 thousand ton
to get 1,000,000 tonne. And every time you finish a
stoke, you've got to either leave a pillar or backfill it
and then drill the next one and like that cycle continues.
So you've to get a. Pillar A pillar is.
Oh, so it's like, say in that you can't just take the whole
chunk of ore out because it'll just, it'll just fall in because
it's like too much of A hydraulic radius exposure and
it'll just start caving in and likely.
And then it'll dilute your ore and could just keep flowing
down. Like as soon as you open up the
levels below it, the Stokes below it, all that dirt falls
down. And you, you know, yeah, your 6g
dirt rapidly becomes 4G. Yeah.
So that, so you leave, you might mind 203040 meters, like 40
meters. If it's good ground then you'll
stop. You'll leave a chunk of rock
which is ore. It's called a pillar, and then
you restart the process so that pillar supports.
It's your support. Supports the hanging wall and
hopefully stops it from falling in the more you expose it.
And the hanging wall is basically what's above you.
Hanging. So you think of a vertical, dead
vertical start. There isn't really a hanging
wall because it's all vertical. If it rolls over that way, if
it's dipping at 80°, that's your hanging wall, That's your foot
wall. And then so all bodies do that.
Yeah. Are they either they're either
vertical or bloody dead flat. Yeah, they're not like a coal
seams dead flat, but they're usually mixtures between, you
know, 20-30 degrees all. The way up to. 90° So when they
call it sub vertical, it means it's pretty bloody close to
vertical. So what's some examples?
I think oh, like Daisy Milano when I was there, perfectly
vertical, most of it, a lot of it was pretty much dead
vertical. I think Aurabanda looks pretty
vertical. You know, Bellevue looks like it
varies. It's somewhere close to
vertical. Then they lay over a bit like
Spartan looks to be about 60-70 degrees.
So whereas and then you go to Gualia, places like, you know,
around that Leonora area, Gualia that dips at 40°.
So it's really laid over. So the issues should come into
there is dead vertical in hard ground ideal.
So you can't really have nothing will hopefully naturally fall in
because it's vertical. But you can't have air mines
that are dead vertical with real laminated laminated ground that
can sort of peel in and dilute which is I think there's a
restart project coming up that has that sort of ground
historically. I'm not like if it's sure that
if it's like that going forward, but then if it then if it's
lying over at 60° and you got poor ground, like you might want
to just take out this chunk here.
But then that starts falling in. So that just starts blowing out
and that's all waste. And that, as I said, takes you
like you can only put a fixed amount of ore through the mill
each year. So say you've got 1,000,000
tonne to go through and all that shit's fallen in, all that
shit's got to go. Through.
It's got to go through. So 1,000,000 at right 4G
compared to 1,000,000 at 3 grams.
That's a shit load of answers that you've lost due to a lower
head grade. So that's why.
And then when it lies over more you obviously have the risk of
the hanging wall caving in so you got to try and protect it.
Can't expose it too much, but then you've got the foot wall as
well. So the shallower it is the if
you fire too much dirt or just it doesn't roll down the foot
wall into the draw point to bog it out.
It just sits there. So you either got to wash it
down or you've you've got to fire a.
Little, but he's not helping. You, no, you got to, you got to
fire just little bits at a time. So it just sort of drops enough
into the drive so you can bog it out and doesn't sit on the foot
wall. And so yeah, if it's too flat,
like if it's below 6055° it just doesn't run down, then you might
have to actually take a chunk out of the foot wall of waste to
steepen it up so it actually rules.
Which again dilutes you because you're having to take waste
you're. Taking waste, yeah.
With with the the ore that you're trying to get out.
Yeah. And I think and I think I would
assume and it's rinse and repeat.
So Gualia, it has been like that for ages.
It's just how it is. It's just how it is.
So I would assume like looking at their grade and everything
like they, they would know the process over and over again to
ensure that they get the foot wall dirt out.
They control the dilution on the hanging wall.
It probably doesn't always go right.
Like there's always something that fucks up.
Sometimes a person that might fuck up and like overcharge it
or drill it incorrectly or something like that.
There's a lot of there's so many things to control underground.
So, so a lot of things are out of your control, but there's so
many things to control as well from management like keeping
their eye on, you know, drilling accuracy, like trying to not
drill too fast and try and be a hero and actually deviating or
like missing the OR like it's all, it all looks good on paper.
But like, that's, and that's why some mines might be, you know,
have a reserve of 6 grams and their head grades coming out at
4 four and a half. They're like, well, what's
wrong? Like why what's is, is the
drilling incorrect? Like there was some people like
think, oh, well, they must have bloody overcalled the resource.
I'm like, well there's that or it could be really, really hard
ground and operators are getting the sheets and they're just
winding up the pressures to try and drill quicker 'cause they're
just frustrated and all that over feeding causes the drill
holes to start deviating. And then, so then when?
When you're. Blasting it it's not how, and
blasting it it's not. I think you're.
Taking how you think it was. Well, you think you're taking a
chunk out in the middle. But it's actually.
Maybe you've actually, you've actually take it out like this
chunk over here 'cause the holes have gone like this and it, you
might actually miss bits of all. So that, and that could affect
the head grade of a is, is drill hole deviation.
So that's why a lot of them, they have to, they need to know
if they're breaking through to the level above like because if
they're not breaking through when they're supposed to be
breaking through, that means they've deviated to the side or
something. So that's, there's a lot of QAQC
that goes into making sure that like, yes, that's, and that's
the the funniest thing you see. And you know, we're all culprits
for it was, as I said, you've got all this prep work that goes
into firing a stoke. That is what the mine is built
for is fire and a stoke. And you get to this, get to the
last point and they're like, Nah, we need it on the deck.
Like there's been months and months and months of work and
money. That's gone in being.
Fired and a shift like it needs to be blown up on the deck.
They call it OK and you get to it like they're like, Nah, needs
to be on the deck and a shift and instead of waiting for half
a shift like and to ensure that everything is done correctly to
make sure that is all blasted out.
How it's supposed to. Yeah, because it could fuck up
and leave a big chunk there that's unblasted.
I've bloody did it. I did it.
I left a big chunk at de Gruser that I'm famous for because it
was all rushed and and like, but all that prep work that's gone
into that point, it's like the focus should be on making sure
everything is being done properly to make sure that stoke
is fired because that was what the hard mine is for.
It's not the jumbo. It's not, it is firing Stokes
and it sort of gets, yeah, it gets a lot of between the whole
all like the con like contractor, like I was there
still a lot when you got the contractor.
They're like, oh, we just want to get work done, get motors,
get tons. Whereas you know, the client who
owns the mine, the client that, well technically the
shareholders owned the mine. They they would want the Stoke
to be fired correctly. It just means waiting 1/2 a.
Shift more Yeah, the client might want a bloody just get a
bloody record for the week. Like it's, yeah, it's, it
sometimes gets lost a bit, but it is the most important thing
on a mine site. The matter you were talking just
before about sort of the size of Stokes and that what other
things can impact getting, you know, tons out of the ground
onto the surface? How Yeah, the heat and the
ventilation system cause like if it's, well, if it's hot, it's
hard for everyone to work and it's just harder to get
everything done 'cause it's frigging hot.
Yeah and it's just. But then the ventilation system
is dependent on if you've got a lot of spread out mining areas
that are have a certain amount of ventilation to each area, you
might be restricted on how many trucks you can send down because
each truck has a certain metres cube to vent that it needs for
that truck to be in the area. Oh, it's like rated so.
Obviously it's not like you could send down 10 trucks if you
wanted to because it's it they need so much vent per truck.
Yeah, yeah. I think it's like, oh, is it 24
cubes or something per second of or a truck?
I don't know, but so all that stuff, you might be ventilation
constrained on how many trucks you can send down at one time.
So you might have one truck have to come all the way out before
you can send another one down to a certain area.
It might be available the dirt's.
Down the dirt's there, the boggers there waiting with the
fucking bucket up in the air, like yeah, so that's
ventilation. If if you hear it, mine being
like needing ventilation upgrades or vent constrained or
anything, you know, it's fucking hard, like, and or it might be
just the deeper it gets, it just gets too hot to have too many
trucks down there. So that that's a big one.
And then and that affects your cycle time.
Like if you can't, can't have heaps of trucks down in one
area, like and you've got a heap of dirt development to get out
to get a jumbo going to because you can't.
That's the thing that it doesn't get appreciated with production
is like you can't just nip away at development all day and then
and do production the whole time.
You might need to go send the trucks all the development at
the start to get the dirt out to have enough room in the
stockpile so they can bog the head and then get the jumbos
back in. And then they all the trucks go
to production where otherwise you've got jumbos and that
parked up doing nothing and not developing the mind.
So it's like all that tied together and you don't really
know until you unless you've worked there.
So you won't read it in an announcement, but anything about
vent constraints, everything, you know, it's just going to be
a bit hard. Yeah.
What? So yeah, spread out mines that
aren't sort of stacked together, you know, you know, you're going
to need a lot of infrastructure, like like a lot of different
vent, different pumping. So if you go like to put like
ventilation in for an area like you've got to develop down there
just on the secondary vent, like just vent from ages away that's
blown through a vent bag. You got to get down there and
then you can't. Then you can start a rise ball,
which to put like a primary vent in, but you need the bottom
excavated first and then you got to pull Raymond out to make it
bigger and then you got to put a fan on it.
And so like getting all that ventilation established, the
capital established can take a lot of time and that can that
can slow the development of the mime, which means it's you might
be vent constrained, you might be not where you need to be.
And so trying to get X amount of tons out just mightn't be
possible till you've got all this this shit in.
So it's like that's where is a simple mine that's just a just a
decline going down and one big fat ore body or multiple ore
bodies next to each other that you access from the one decline.
Yeah, could be one set of vent infrastructure for it, one set
of pumping like all the powers gets fed off from the one place
and. It's simpler.
It's just easy. Like it's just nice and simple.
That means if things are easy and you don't need all that
other shit going on to make everything else happen, you
should be able to get your dirt out easy.
Yeah. So there's like and it's even
like getting the dirt to the mill, like it's getting the tons
out of the hole are one thing, but then getting the dirt to the
ROM to the crusher and then into the mill.
That's another thing because you don't want fucking.
That's why you get so pushed to do it.
Well, that's why mind the mill specialists like you look at the
underground trucks that are squashed down and driving around
at friggin 15 KS an hour. I don't know how quick they go
on the surface. Probably 20 or something.
You know what I'm fucking around doing that on the surface,
getting it up to the mill. You just get it.
Like if you're in a pit, you just put a mini ROM pad in the
pit, dump it there, get back underground, keep the boggers
going, keep the jumbos going. You have the salt Bush trucks
tight buggering around with all that and taking it to the mill.
Like that's why those underground trucks aren't built
for driving around the surface wasting their time.
They need to be underground, they need to be moving dirt and
that's why salt Bush do the surface stuff.
That's why they're the mind and mill specialist.
They wouldn't exist if you didn't need them.
JC. And they love tons.
Yeah, they love tons. So pretty much if you want the
best chance of hitting a target, get saltpush on your mine site.
Anyway, that's I'm dead set serious when I say that too.
And to divert a little bit, so now you're down there on, on
your jumbo or your production rig or or whatever, there's all
these, you know, gear and machines running around you.
You might be 2300 metres underground, if not more.
How hot is it under there? And with all the gear you're
wearing as well, like, how can you?
Like, what was your experience of trying to work in those
conditions? Oh, what?
Does it even like took you? It takes you to some dark places
at some mines because I've worked in some fucking hot
mines. Like, I think I worked, I
finished at a good one that wasn't that hot, but God, I
worked at friggin between Telfer, Agnew, Paulsen's and
Golden Grove. They're all fucking deep hot and
oh, it's yeah, it's freaking and you it's like.
Precise and you know. And you're there for 11 and a
bit hours because you don't like I only ever worked with
contractors. So you like you freaking work 11
1/2 hours straight like you don't none of the like you
wouldn't park up for lunch on a jumbo like that is just you just
don't do it. Like it's just not how it works.
Like you, you work for, you work the whole way through and like,
wow, you'll be especially when you start getting hot because
you get to that point of especially the first night shift
in back from break because you're used to being awake in
the day. You get down there at night and
you are just like, you're just nauseous, like you're sick and
you start vomiting because your body's not used to being awake
and then it's hot. So you just, you just really got
to look after yourself And then like you get to the, you can get
to the point at the end like midway through and you, you
start cramping and like 'cause once you start, you can't sort
of stop cramping. You got to sort of limp your way
through And like when it's two and, but then like 2 days into
the swing, you're like your body's used to it and you can,
you run around, you sweat it like anything and you're, and
you're fine. But it's that.
That adjustment period at the start of being back at work.
Oh, and you got to like and when you're 'cause I was just bloody
flat out keen as anything. But if you, if you're too kind
and because you're doing everything the hard way, because
you're not as you're just, yeah, you just might know how to do
things properly. And then you're you're.
Fatigued and then you're just, oh, you just start, you start
not making decisions properly, like you just it's such a big
focus trying to keep everyone bloody.
When it's hot, it's hot, but it can affect the output of the of
the mind because you've got people like you've really got to
slow down sometimes or yeah, like you can't slow down too
much because then you sort of lose, you become a bit lazy.
Like you got to, you got to move with the purpose down there
because if you're not like you mightn't be, you get complacent.
They're like, oh, you got to slow down.
Think about what you're doing. Like some I've always believed
you got to you got to work hard and can be switched on like
hyper because you're thinking about everything when you.
Go too slow, you get lazy and that's when shit can happen
sometimes, yeah. So, yeah, it's.
But then depends on how, depends on the depth, depends on.
So talking about hate, but you could have like these shallow
minds that are fucking hot because they've got all bodies
spread out everywhere and they've got they've got to try
and independently ventilate. And I've talked about this these
places before, but you got to they got to independently
ventilate those areas. So you need to like dedicated
fan return airway or they might be reliant on that air to come
back out of that area to flow down to another area.
So when they're you, you can't just how a development and even
a production cycle works. Like there's not just one truck
going down every day and then throughout the whole day
consistently. Like when a bogger needs to bog
out a heading and they fill a stockpile up, they need to get
there could be like 8 trucks worth of dirt to come out of
that heading, right? So they don't, you can't just
have one truck go down every hour because you need to get
that cleaned out as quick as you can and bogged out so that the
jumbo can get back in there. So you might have, you know, 3
trucks all going down there at once, like and they're just load
that one goes out, the other one comes in.
So you got 3, you've already got the bogger there generating
heat. Then you've got all three trucks
going down there, which are all generating a lot of heat because
they're diesel trucks. And then that ventilation
system, like the air is there to try and keep it cool and flush
all the fumes and the heat out. But if you've got all that down
there, that's that area then just gets so hot because that's
like the trucks are driving under the vent bag, which is
heating the air up that's coming out of there.
So when you're working in that, so then you might, you Jumbo
might and this is what I talk about, you know, like say if
they're they're doing production up one end of the level and then
Jumbo's up the other end of the level.
This is what Tucker talked about.
You've got all those, the remote bogger might fill up the stock
ball and then they they need all the trucks to come down to bog
it all out, empty the stockpile so they can start telling
remoting again, which is when they're on the joysticks in an
open stop. But all those trucks are coming
down heating up all the vent bag and everything that's blowing
the air on the jump operator up the end.
So that's why it's important to trying to have your development
completely. Separated from your.
Production like as much as as best as you can.
So because you're going to get more out of that operator if
they're not dizzy and hot and cramping and everything and
they're comfortable, then you would like yeah, when they you
put them in that environment. So.
Cause with the ventilation, like, you know, does like how,
how cool would that make the an, an underground mine setting?
Or is it just, you know, they try and keep it at X degrees,
but then, you know, depending on like as you say, what's going on
in the mine, that sort of ebb and flow, you know, throughout
the day. Oh yeah, it depends.
Depends on the surface temperature.
So 'cause if you've got, you know, if it's 45° on the
surface, that's 45° dry bulb that's coming through the
portal. So you can't really cool it down
from there. So the, the temperature
underground is more humid because of the water and yes,
and everything. So, but then you go, it'll go to
winter and the, the underground is cooler because the surface is
cool. So and then in your really,
really deep minds where they need need refrigeration to cool
the air further, when I remember at Telfer when the cyclone
season come over, the refrigeration was an it's like
an evaporative refrigeration, same as what you have in your
house. So when it's humid on the
surface, evapor, evaporative air con doesn't work that well.
So I like the IT wasn't actually chilling the air that much and
it was it was fucking it's hot. So mines aren't.
So when you've got spread out mines, that's just like the
ventilation challenges, the infrastructure challenges, like
between the pumping the power, getting it all down there, like
all the machinery having to go from here and trim all the way
to here. Like it's you might have the
same amount of gold or copper or whatever, but it's so much
harder to get to it. Yeah.
And get work involved to get that same yeah amount.
And that, and that's why you look at mines that are just,
they might have all their ore bodies stacked together or like
it's just one decline that goes in and you go into a level and
there's just shit loads of gold or copper on one level and the
trucks just go in and out. And then they just do another
level. And they don't have to.
There's one set of there's one set of pumping infrastructure,
there's one set of power for it. There's there's like just a big
return airway bent rise. Like there's just, it's just
easy, like and then the air goes in to one level, comes back out,
goes down to the other one like, and it's just simple like.
And so sometimes the most simplest operations, they
mightn't have high grade, but they're so much easier to
achieve their targets. And I think, I think you asked
me this question before and I'll just ranted on about something
completely different. But you want to look at from a
investment point of view how a mine is going to hit their
targets. It's like, well, how easy is it
for them to get 1,000,000 tonne out or 1 1/2 or?
What's the work? Or three million tonne, look at
long Town, everyone's like can they get 3,000,000 tonne out of
an out of an underground? If they just put one decline in
to go and had all these trucks fighting each other up and down,
they would not get 3,000,000 tonne.
But the difference, the thing that they've done to make it
possible is having like an update client and a down
decline. So they've spent the money to.
Simplify the. Yeah.
So also pretty much every truck that goes down will go down and
get loaded and then it'll go around some loop or access the
update client. So you've just got they're going
in. So instead of them all going
down and one has to, one has to pull off to let the other one
passed and like just back and forth, back and forth, they,
they've just got to have this circuit where it'll just, and
that, that could be worth, I don't know, that could be worth
half a million tonne a year just in efficiency at least.
And that's the thing, it's sort of hard to quantify the the
benefits or the outcomes of that because yes, there's obviously
capital involved to put that in place.
But then it's like, Oh well, what's my return on it?
And it's sort of hard to, it's hard to quantify what the, the
benefit is because it's like, Oh well, because I'm able to get in
and out of the mind quicker. I'm not getting in people's way,
you know, perhaps I can, you know, get so much more tons in a
particular shift or a particular week and stuff.
So yeah, like you'd never really think to, I guess from my
perspective, think to even like look at something like that.
Oh, and it's like because they might need that amount of tons
to like make money like at scale, like, you know, a gold
mine with all the people and equipment and everything
provided. They're not going to just mine
200,000 tonne a year. It's not going to pay for
everything. Like they might need to get to
get the share market happy and everything.
They might need to get 1,000,000 tonne.
But there is so many things that conhibit that I said like just
all body location when they're all spread out and that means
there's more capital required to get to each of them, more vent
required, which costs more money.
So like your operating costs, your capital cost goes up and
even probably your operating cost goes up because it's not as
efficient because you're just it's all over the shop.
But when you've got a simple operation, you might need less
machinery to get the same amount of material out.
And then like it's like ground hardness like rock like that can
and ground conditions like and water like as soon as you start.
Water. Water what's what's it's
probably. Just a simple.
Question of what what What's the What's water really important
for underground for those who don't know.
Well, or you need water to power the rigs.
Yeah, but then water if there's too much water and you're trying
to develop a decline, but you can't pump the water out to have
a clean area down there to put all the holes in and charge it
all. You just can't.
It's just a you're in a friggin standstill nearly.
So water can be waters can be your biggest.
The only thing you need waterfalls to, you know, wash
everything down and power the rigs.
But which is if you don't have it, you can't do anything.
But then if you have too much of it coming.
Through the ground. It completely fucks the joint.
So I'll, I'll take you through the journey.
If the if you're developing the ideal mind or the OR a shit one,
and a lot of it's out, it's out of the owner's control.
It's what was what God put there.
Yeah. So you cut the border, which is
the coming in from the surface or in from in from a pit or
whatever, and you start mining the.
Front door to the front the. Front door, best way to put it.
So your ideal situation is like the ground's nice and competent.
It's not not too hard. Like if it's too hard, it takes
so long to drill all the holes and you're just it's, it's just.
You need sort of something in the middle.
That boring process of showing for an old drive, you could
either take you, it could take you an hour in good ground like
just which is easy to get through, or it might take you 2
hours in if it's really, really hard.
So that's like that's a lot less meters per jumbo depending on
the hardness. So I say you're going through
punching that in like it's all if it's nice and competent, that
means you don't need shit loads of ground support.
It's just normal mesh and split sets.
Whereas if the ground is like poor and it's falling in or like
you might need to put shock crate up, which is cement.
So it's like an extra machine that has an extra cost you have
to put in. Then you might have to put mesh
over the top of that. Then you might have to put resin
bolts in, which which take twice as long, even more than split
sets like it might, and it costs more.
Oh, it's just because you got to put the glue in.
Then you got to put the bolt in. So it's an extra step.
Two steps and then if it's shit ground you might be scale and
heaps like it's that. So ideally if it's competent,
you can drill quick enough. It's not much ground support,
the whole mind just flows. It's just easy.
And whereas you might have hard ground in common ground, but it
might, you might drill a 4 1/2 meter hole and I blast out three
meters and you've got all this shit you got to scale off called
the butt. So I like the I don't know what
I don't know what the word the exca Excava excavability.
Not at all. They're just like the blaster,
how blaster bullet is like some ground blasts easy.
Some ground is a pain in the ass to do it.
So and that can fuck you around. So like your meters advance per
cycle is lower, so you're not getting as far.
So and then like if the ground shit like between putting,
putting up extra ground support takes heaps longer cost heaps
more. So like the meters you get it,
you know, or like for John D when I was there, awesome
ground. Like don't need heaps of ground
support. There's just, you know, all
drivers, like 3 sheets of mesh and bloody 20 bolts or
something. And you, you're in and out in an
hour. And whereas some mines you might
be balding and heading for five or six hours because it's got
all these different forms of ground support and it's all
those factors. And so now and what the ground
conditions are. So if I'm looking out of mind to
hit targets, it's like when they're talking about the
ground, ground's really hard. So it's really slow or the
ground conditions are poor and it needs types of ground
support. And your meters per jumbo are a
lot lower. Like you just know it's hard
work. So that means production will
catch up to development quickly. Everything's going to be on top
of each other. And so you can sort it from
after working in it and applying it to because I guess fight like
looking at the financials are all, you know, backwards looking
like it's like this is how much it's cost.
This is the this is what the mod the models are predicting for
the future based on their guidance and everything.
Like, whereas I think if you look at the, the ore body and
the mind design and the ground conditions and it, as I said, if
there's water, like if there's water, natural water coming in,
that makes everything difficult. Like controlling that can take
time. And like all those factors you
think of like you can sort of analyse like, right?
Can you predict any if this is going to be an easy mine or a
hard mine, like to hit targets like, and sometimes the, it's
just the most boring, simple vertical narrow vine mines that
just keep going and going, just continue to make money.
And whereas the the ones that have got shit ground hot, like a
lot of bloody cost of infrastructures like because
you've got to put that much in like it just they just seem to
be always chasing their tail. But then sort of taking it a, a
step back. So as far as the process, so you
said you open up the, the portal, the front door to the
underground mine. Then then what happens after
that? Because we sort of we sort of
jumped straight to the jumbo and the production side.
So, so but what happens all before that, before the the
jumbos and the production rigs get in?
Well, that the jumbos do in the portal.
They're they're doing the portal.
Yeah, so they do that whole thing the whole way down.
But if, as I said, if the, if your cycle's taken twice as long
because of shit ground or more ground support needed, that
means it takes you 2 years to get to 1st production instead of
one year because you've it takes you twice as long to develop all
the drives and decline and, and everything.
So yeah, that's why you know, for them to companies will say,
oh, we got first production in November next year, just 12
months away. They're like, and they finally
just cut the portal. It's like that's how they can
sort of come unstuck because they get in there and they're
like Adriatic perfect example. They predicted all these things
began then get down there and the ground was absolutely shit
and it just kept all and they had to put all this extra ground
support in and everything just blew out because I think mostly
a function of ground conditions that they did not predict.
And then it just blew out. Timelines blew out first
concentrate because you just, you can only mine as quick as
the operator and the ground let you.
So yeah. So you cut the portal and then
the decline is basically the is that sort of like the could you
think of it as like the main freeway that everyone sort of
comes on and off on to go back out?
The good analogies. Jason, I'm trying to simplify it
for my brain. It's like the the decline is the
freeway and all the levels are the streets.
The streets, Yeah. Oh, that's actually, yeah,
that's a good visual actually. That's OK.
And then you got all the levels and then sort of as you, you
pretty much. You could think like, you could
think of the ore drives as Peppermint Drive.
So what do you that's like, that's like the Boulevard,
that's where all the money is. You've got like, well, West
Coast Dr. Broome, St. Mummy and St. the 6011.
Yeah, all of coming off Stirling Highway.
Yeah, yeah. OK, so that's sort of that's
actually just visually thinking about it that like that really
simplifies it for me. But actually going, I know we're
sort of jumping around here, but just sort of getting in the
weeds and stuff is awesome. So like what have you talked
about before sort of certain stats, you know, they appear,
you know, you know, sort of simple or a bit rudimentary, but
then what it can perhaps signal of what's to come with the mine
or what's sort of happening at the mine and stuff.
What are what are some other ones that are you know or gives
you, you know, say if in a ramp up situation that you think, OK,
ramp up seems to be going well or things are maybe a bit slower
than anticipated. Oh, it's the average metres per
month per jumbo is usually the an indicator.
Like if it's, if the jumbos are killing it, like just you know,
there's not many jumbos, they're getting a lot of metres.
That's an indication straight away that oh, the ground's good.
Like it's obviously. They're working their way
through. Easy digging and means like, oh,
they obviously don't need too much ground support like so the
ground conditions must be good. You know that you know, if
they're they're in the four hundreds or something, you're
like, oh shit, that's bloody, that's good gun.
Well, that's whereas, you know, if they've struggling to get
300, you're like, OK, why are they only getting 300?
Is it do they need a lot of ground support?
Is the ground really hard? Is you know, is it really spread
out? Like is that the issue?
Is how does someone like me know how much meters a jumbo should
be doing a a month or 1/4 at a particular mine?
Oh just do they know? Does the company normally say
this is? No, it just says, oh, they'll
say it in the feasibility study and everything, but it's just
based on knowing what a jumbo can achieve.
And, you know, normally they've, if they've got good, good people
there, like they're, they want to achieve.
And like, there's, you know, there's obviously different
levels of skills. Like there's you, they pay shit
loads that are, you know, going to get that are going to get
more and that bring good people with them.
Or if they're just they're not going to pay shit loads, they
might get someone a bit down the run that and it just doesn't
flow as much. But it's, it's a money trade
off. But it's that, that's, that's
sort of one that because that's the hardest thing in like
quarterlies and that like they're not going to, they don't
go into too much detail, but you want to know, it's just sort of
a bit of an indicator on how the, because so if the, if the
ground can, if they're not putting much ground support up,
but they're still not getting heaps of metres, that means
that, OK, the ground's obviously really hard.
And so that that's making it slow for the jumbos, which means
OK, that's going to make it slow for the jumbos to get ahead of
production. And production and development
are always going to be fighting. It's going to be hard to get
sort of a consistency. And it might and it might, you
know, I mean that it's really hard and holes might deviate if
they overfeed or, or whatever, like, and it's just like, oh,
it's like, fuck, there's could be some dramas coming up.
And then or if it says they're putting in lots of ground
support because the ground conditions are poor, it's like,
OK, well, if the ground conditions are poor in
development, that means when they go into production, they're
probably going to be poor as well.
It usually, usually Adriatic was actually the other way around.
There was poor ground conditions in the capital, but the ground
got actually good in the ore, which is oh, OK, yeah,
completely the opposite. So that then you can infer from
that, OK, if the ground conditions are poor, that means
it may dilute the grade of the reserve.
The reserve might apply. 10 to 20% unplanned dilution, that
might be high. So that may might mean the head
grade might be lower going through the mill.
It's like, OK, that means there might be a risk of not hitting
guidance and so you can sort of use all that.
Just a bit of a leading indicator of what might be
happening along the way. Yeah, yeah.
And it's like, and they're, they're never going to really
tell like you'd probably see from a site visit the level of
ground support that goes in and they're not going to really
disclose all the details of like.
That level of granularity. Yeah, yeah.
And it's like that you, you know, and because a lot of these
mines are restarts, like, like you knew Bellevue was hard
before Bellevue started because it was a historical mine.
So all the people that used to work in it were like, oh, it's
bloody hard as anything, you know, like Andy, Well, for
instance, that's a race start. People have worked there before,
like the and the ground was laminated.
Then I assume it still is laminated.
So like you, that's the thing. It's like, it's not like, I
don't know, you can ask people that have worked, worked, worked
at these places 20 years ago. What was that joint like to work
out? What were the issues?
They're like, oh, yada, yada, yada.
I don't think it's, I don't think that's illegal to like ask
someone that's worked in a mine before.
What was the ground like? It's just a personal
conversation. Yeah.
And then so the actual, the sort of the the mining, the
underground mining method, I mean we sort of ran through it A
at a high level just sort of as we're chatting is that is that
the only way you can mine underground?
I imagine there's, you know, you hear the terms like block caving
and other sorts of things. So is that just because I heard,
is it long haul open soaping is that's what you've described?
Yeah, yeah, pretty much that. And that's the most common one
in Australia. It's long haul open stopping.
It's just, yeah, it's just mining, mining the veins out for
whatever commodity you're mining where.
But when it's like bulk, like a copper gold porphyry or like a
big bulk ore body, that's when your cavings come into it.
Like our gold diamond mine that was a block cave.
It was just because it's like a diamond.
The pipe they just block caved the pipe Telfer.
Telfer was actually the sub level cave, which is it's
different to a block cave. You just mine the levels and
like instead of going all the way to the bottom and letting
the whole thing cave you just sort of you still mine each
level and then it gradually just caves down and you just follow
it down a bit different. You just still develop every
level. Go watch a video on YouTube if
anyone wants to know the difference.
But I think that was just a heap of gold vines like in an area.
And it's like, well, instead of mining them independently and
fucking around, we'll just take it all together as a bulk low
grade operation like Leinster Perseverance, the nickel
operation. That was a sub level cave like
Maggie Hayes, which was all I think it was like Nora List.
The Russians owned that back in the day.
I think that was a sub level cave.
I think Redeemer back in the day that was a sub level cave.
I think it's some other ones around.
And like you know, your big sub level caves and block caves in
Australia or Arcadia. That's like the like even
Tanami, like that's a big a big mine that's still open stopping.
Like that's not caved. That's a big pretty big decent
ore body. That's still mind is stopping.
It just just depends. But you'd pick the the
underground mining method based on the ore body.
The ore body show Ernest Henry, that was another sub level cave
that's like, yeah, ore body shape.
Like who's doing it? Like to do a block cave it has
to be done by a a Newmont or a BHP or a Rea because they have
the capital and the money behind them to develop all the way down
to the bottom and not make any money for.
Ages. Yep.
And then create a block cave, whereas a bloody Northern Star
might. They're not at that scale.
They're like now we want cash flow, now we're going.
To develop aggressively. Friggin soaping operation or a
sub level cave because we want cash now just but it is all body
dependent but a lot who's minded it as well.
And then the the last question I'd like to ask you, and I think
we've also gone for around an hour as well.
What's something or a couple of things about underground mining
that are really underappreciated that you want people to know If
you could stand in the middle of Saint George's Terrace To all
the brokers and the bankers who just like maybe don't understand
this as well and go, you know, you need to know about this.
This is this is really important.
You need to appreciate this. Yeah, well it's all we've talked
about a bit today. Like it's funny.
Safety is like, you know, it is at the top of top of the bloody
announcement. Usually there we take the piss
out of it a bit. But if you're not having
incidents on site it means management aren't fucking around
doing icams and like having people in the office.
OK, sorry, it's. Like a safety investigation
process, OK, incident investigation process.
If they're bugging around doing all that shit, they're not
focusing on mining. So if there's like a a site that
doesn't have many incidents, the whole everything just flows.
Everything's easy. No one's hurting for themselves.
Like, you know, things are getting done right.
That's that's a a thing that's probably under appreciated from
the investor side. It's just a it's just a bit of a
number. But and obviously you don't, you
do not want people going up there being hurt or worse.
Yes, trying to earn a living like it's just freaking
horrible. Absolutely.
So that, and that's, but the success of a mine is like, you
know, is the safe, the safest minds and the happiest minds is
some are usually the most productive and the most, which
return more money to shareholders.
Like hate like, and, and that's what like these models and
everything when they people dish management, they're like, oh,
manage, that's management's job. As in like the fucking managing
director or whatever. This one person.
Well, as I said, there are hundreds of people working on
these mine sites and there's so many layers of middle management
that are trying to get all these things to happen to deliver
1,000,000 tonne to the mill and 150,000 oz like it is.
There is so much that goes into it and then.
So many variables to control and some that are out of your
control. Oh, mate, and the, and the, the
pressure and responsibility on the management, especially like
the, the senior execs here like that are employing a lot of
people and that employ a lot of people and have to trust these
people to do their job. So the person below them does
their job and everyone does their job to get the figures to
get it done safely, so they can report to the market that
they've hit guidance or they've just misguided.
And what goes into that number is phenomenal.
And I just don't think people appreciate it.
So when they sort of hang shit on management and about like
poor management and poor decisions and like they start
becoming a bit of a scapegoat. It's all from people that
haven't been there and done it. Like once you've been there and
done it and watched it and being involved in it, there is so much
that goes into it. So yes, it is shareholder money
that can be affected by, you know, over promotion and and
things like that. But fuck me, there's a lot of
people that work their ass off and away from their family and
everything to get make all that happen that just sort of get
consumed by a number at the end of the quarter.
So yeah, it's maybe that's why I'm a bit softer.
But what's the other one like? Yeah, hey, we talked about hate
barking hard work like that's and what else?
Oh, the amount of just probably the amount of the service
providers that go into making mines possible and like the the
amount of people that are like contracting and being a service
provider. It's not they're all not
millionaires. A lot of them have might be
freaking strung out 90 days waiting for payments from mining
companies. Family businesses.
Yeah, like, and there's some people that have just got it on
the line. They might get rich when they're
60, but far out. There's some people that have
some bloody minerals to, you know, assist the mining
industry. So pay your invoices on time.
Mining companies don't fuck around with trade payables, but
look after the small businesses. Fuck what else?
I don't know. That's good.
Fucking love mining. Love it, love it.
It's been frigging good to me. I wouldn't be sitting here doing
this if it wasn't for the mining industry.
There's a lot of shit that goes around about it, but I can what?
He makes this fucking country great.
Go Australia. Go.
Australian go mining. That was that was awesome.
I I just like you said the other day, I I was fascinated by that.
I think I'll for me, I kind of I've knew bits and pieces and
then some of the the bits that sort of join it together sort of
got really clarified and really solidified in my mind today.
So that was, that was. Awesome.
Oh, and it's like as it's trying to condense and I think it was a
comment on the YouTube like you're trying to condense like I
only did it 14 years, which is actually probably not.
That is not that long compared to people that have been in the
industry. And like just the fucking, the
info you can absorb in that time is like trying to explain it.
It's just every time I look at a, an announcement or something,
you sort of apply it to a historical learning.
Oh, that was hard at that joint. Is that going to be hard at
that, like difficult at that joint?
Oh, that was that looks like this place that was easy.
Or is that going to be easy like it's yeah.
And it's just based on what you've seen or what you've
heard. So just keep your ears open,
everyone. Just talk, talk to talk to
everyone. You can learn something off
everyone. Especially, you know, I think
you've mentioned this on the on the show before, like you, you
come across miners or operators that have been, you know, doing
this for 30-40, you know, maybe even longer years and, you know,
listen to what they have to say. You know, they've they've seen a
lot. So I mean, I don't think 14
years is anything to snooze at anyway.
So I'm sure the money might have got.
To learn. Hey, the last one.
The last one, that's all that counts, going out on a high.
Oh daddy, I wasn't even that good.
Yeah, now I enjoyed it, but it was freaking good fun.
Don't miss getting up at 3:45, that's for sure.
Yeah, that'd be a nice refreshing change being back in
Perth. Oh, now, now I'm just a now I'm
just looking at gold exploration.
Oh. Oh, love it.
Oh, should we do? What could we could do?
Rapid fire, right buddy? Just to finish it off, just.
To to finish it off. Yeah, it's pretty much Jake
Klein stepping down as to non exact.
Yeah. So, Jake.
Evolution. And they had a a pretty record
half one for FY25 evolution. So literally.
Doubled the dividend I or something?
They nearly tripled it. Yeah, no, no huge increase
there. So it was sort of the, yeah, the
main news which I think was sort of largely anticipated by the
market. You know, Jake, the exec chair
moving to non exec chair, you know, the financial results, you
know, you know, statutory net profit, $365 million, you know,
underlying EBITDA, you know, just over a billion, a record
group cash flow 273,000,000 all up, up, up, up, up.
So that's was all very exciting. And they announced the seven
cent interim dividend gearing's down.
They're sort of targeting to get that down to 20%.
It's currently 23. So they're targeting get that
20% by the end of this financial year guidance, looking all on
track to deliver that for this financial year.
Just a quick round up of what happened at HS at this house.
SoCal got that regulatory approval to extend the open peer
operations by 10 years and the overall operations to 2042 FID
the June 25 quarter. And I think they got an
annualised mining rate of 2,000,000 tonnes.
So that's sort of a $0.25 increase in gold production
there. Ernest Henry was pretty
consistent. N Parks seems to be doing pretty
well. They generated $122 million in
cash flow since they bought that asset.
Red Lake is starting to demonstrate some operational
consistency. So they had a a record half year
net mine cash flow, 44 mil gold production up 38%.
That Mongari mill expansion, which you don't sort of see this
everyday, nine months ahead of schedule and about $15 million
below budget. There you go.
How good's that? Oh, and then Mount Mount Rawdon
mining ceased. So that's sort of transitioning
to stockpile processing there. And we're to come this quarter.
There's some studies on extensions at North Park St.
Ernest Henry. Saint Barbs.
Yes. So they're they're saying
goodbye to they would Atlantic gold operation.
So they announced today their intention to sort of separate
the Atlantic gold OPS. So this includes 15 mile Beaver
Dam and Cochrane Hill projects in Canada from the company
following a portfolio review. They basically suggested that as
part of that portfolio review that it you know, would better
maximise shareholder value by advancing Atlantic under you
know a Canadian company with local leadership, you know via
some sort of a sale or a vending or a demerger sort of potential
ways to to do that. So once that is done, their sole
focus would be on their Simberry operation in the PNG.
So that's it, St. Barbara will just be Simberry.
Yeah. So it's sort of, you know, Guali
and all that went to Genesis this they've flagged that they
wanna sort of separate their landing stuff.
So it's due back to or not back to, but it's now just Simberry
as you said, so and it's just quite amazing.
That's sort of less than six years ago after acquiring it, I
believe it was for about a Canadian or about 800 million
Aussie, I think something like that and not too much cash
flows. And now sort of parting ways
with it. I think their market cap at the
time of acquiring that asset was sort of in the mid ones to maybe
load, you know, load 2 billions. Now it's sort of 300 mil market
cap. And we'd, you know, a lot's
changed since back then. They've had a bit of a tough
time the last few months. So you know, sort of November
when they sort of raised money and announced that Simbiri
expansion. They were sort of trading in the
mid 40s, then to the low 30s, then fell again to the mid 20s
later in the year when they received a, a tax assessment
from the PNG government on Simbiri, which was sort of
claiming additional taxes and A and a penalty in position of
$210 million, which they've they've rejecting and, and
defending and sort of yeah, trading in the mid 20s still
today. You know, they could certainly,
you know, depending on what they do with the Atlantic assets, you
know, use that proceeds to sort of reinvest at Simbiri.
But I don't know who would, who would buy that?
I'm not sure. I'm not too familiar with, you
know, they're saying, you know, a Canadian company summing up
that way should be, you know, the natural hold of those
assets. I'm not too familiar with that
part of the world. So good luck to them.
Yeah. So interesting to say what
happens with that one. And to finish on a bit of a
shell. Yeah, could be a shell too.
Right, but it might be into an ASX shell, who knows?
So we, yeah, literally, who knows?
So we'll we'll keep following that one and to finish on a bit
of a a bit of a fun note. We've had there's been a few
small cap gold explorer bolters this month.
You know, all pretty early stage stuff from from a few minnows
around this sort of West Australian, you know, gold space
in the last week or so. But that have, you know, they've
put some, you know, essay results and got cops and, you
know, pretty huge share price reactions so.
Wait, go, go take us through them.
This excites me, this stuff. Yeah, so which is, you know, in
a what do we have 4600 odd buck an ounce Aussie gold price
environment, It's pretty exciting stuff.
So, So what happened? So Ozorim a couple weeks ago
recorded reported some aircore results at their Mull Gabby N
Gold project. One of the hits was 20 metres at
3.57g a tonne from surface. They were up over, you know,
since they announced so over 400% off the back of that
result. And you can see here on on a map
from one of their announcements that they're pretty close to
Northern Stars, Kara Sudan and Ramirez's sort of Rebecca Rowe
project. Another one sort of few days
later on the 7th of Feb, Kalgoorlie Gold Mining reported
some air core drill results at their pingin, which is now
they're calling Light Horse prospect.
One of the hits was 17 metres at 4.8g per tonne gold from 48
metres similar. You know they had a similar
share price reaction up over 330% since those results.
Our Daya resources are a shareholder of that.
I think they sub close to 5% the nickel produces.
Like, oh, there you go, I've been out.
Of this than the bloody nickel? And yeah, so they're, they're
apparently 222 kilometres northwest of Ramirez's Rebecca
Rd. project. And then they're also 30
kilometres from Ozorum, which we just talked about now as well.
The Northern Star and Ramirez would be like oh geez.
What? What's going on here?
Yeah. Yeah.
And and then finally Caprice, which is a.
Ding, Ding, Ding today, ping. Some up white.
Bloody. And that was yeah, today.
So they reported some RC essay results from their Ireland
projects. So one of their hits was 28
metres at 6.4g per tonne gold from 114 metres though up over
100 and something percent today. And they're very, very close to
Remelius's break of day project. You can see on one of their maps
from the announcements. Yeah.
Maybe Remelius won't need to buy Karasudam or anything.
Oh yeah, that's why I was quite funny.
I was like, oh geez, they're all like all these three in the last
sort of week and a half all seem to be around Remelius's asset.
So, you know, if Spartan doesn't work out, you know, they might
have some early stage prospects in the pipeline, but there's.
A couple of other ones too, Jason.
Yeah, oh God, I'm sure there's plenty, but I know it's.
Great. When they've gone up to 100%
I'll be proud. Ding, Ding, Ding.
I love it, but no, it's great to, you know, obviously all this
is pretty early stage stuff, but it's, it's great to see some,
some positive activity sort of heading down into the, you know,
the early stage explorer curve of the development cycle in, in
WA. So it's awesome.
How good is it? Oh, that was a bloody marathon.
I think I waffled on with absolute shit, but it's just, I
get so excited and it's like underground lighting.
I love it. I just love it.
Oh, and I'm sure the money miners would have loved it as
well. I've so just as much as you love
MMS and. I love Underground Operators
conference. And grounded.
Oh who else do I love? JC.
Sambic Ground. Support oh CR insurance I love
them K Drill, I love K. Drill saltbush contracting at
the top of the show on. The Mill.
SWIG. Love, swig, Love diamond drills.
Kotro Project Engineering, Love Jeremy and Cross boundary
energy. Oh, I love Tim Taylor Hurduru
buddy miners. Hurry.
Information contained in this episode of Money of Mine is of
general nature only and does not take into account the
objectives, financial situation or needs of any particular
person. Before making any investment
decision, you should consult with your financial advisor and
consider how appropriate the advice is to your objectives,
financial situation and needs.