Novo: Featured Posts
Here are some of the best posts from the Novo forum lately (in my opinion):
1.From Exploratory:
“The most recent news release is important to the investment case for Novo because it offers additional and significant qualitative confirmation of real prospects for markedly improved economics which will IMO eventually be reflected in enhanced enterprise value and share price. These improved economic prospects consist of not only the opportunity for much lower costs per ton for extracting and processing the varieties of Novo’s Pilbara gold deposits (not just at Egina) leading to far lower cost/greater profit overall, but also — and significantly for share price — suggests the likely movement of truly vast tonnages of gold bearing gravels and conglomerates from a previously probably sub-economic category into the economic category. To me, this implies many millions of ounces more of recoverable gold. Add to that the dry and chemical free advantages of the new technologies which can confer immense social and political benefits of a revolutionary mining approach that can be resource conserving and kind to the earth and those who care about it, including the indigenous peoples of the Pilbara, and a vision for widespread green mining that can be realistically permitted and accomplished can be seen on the horizon before us. It’s the opposite of the zero sum mining of the past where there were necessarily winners and losers, but a have your cake and eat it too wealth creation by Novo where everyone wins. Plus, the new application of these sensing and sorting technologies to mining in the Pilbara in still very much in its infancy, and because there’s so much money potentially involved if additionally breakthroughs and improvements are made, the history of technological progress and technology life cycles suggests that we’re only just beginning to see the results that are possible. In short, Novo is EVEN BETTER than we thought. This will become clear when Novo finally elects to put numbers to the dots, but IMO the dots can already be connected, and those who wait for the numbers will have missed out on some portion (but not all) of the up-side in Novo. Those of us who are already in strong stand to enjoy the greatest benefits. So, yes, I continue to acquire Novo with confidence in its ultimate success and the party in Perth, which I hope will come sooner than later!”
2. From Rob Humphryson:
“Constructive criticism is always welcome – that is in fact one of Novo’s agreed team behaviours owing to the unique style of deposits we have and the necessity for innovation. Good questions and very difficult for people to understand without the context of actually seeing it first hand.
Doing my best to answer the queries in order :
From our in-field observations so far, oversize at Egina will be minimal – per what you observed in the rockpiles at the mill and in the rockpiles ready for trucking at the trenches, plus what you can observe in the walls of the trenches. Not anticipating any crushing for Egina as mother nature has kindly provided this service free of charge over the millenia. Only possible need for any crushing is if the geology substantially changes away from Egina or the infinitesimally small amount of +50mm material we observe at Egina has commercial quantities of gold contained within and it’s economic to crush the oversize and extract the gold (unlikely). Current concept is that large nuggets above 50mm would be detected and scraped off tails conveyor belt scanners (twin to be ensure detection in case of individual unit failure – big nuggets too valuable to lose) with smaller material being processed through mechanical sorters or other. Comet Well on the other hand would definitely require crushing prior to screening and further processing, per the mechanical sorter trial run late 2018.
Transport is interesting – if we can design a plant that can trail behind a continuous miner, this opens up a world of opportunity in terms of reducing costs. A concept under consideration is to handle the material only once and return it to the ground via a tails conveyor in a single pass, then flatten it and rehabilitate it straight away. Intuitively seems feasible but there will no doubt be technical issues linking the mining, processing and rehabilitation that will require further work – hence a staged approach to field trials. Key is mechanical sorter thoughput rates to match continuous miner production rates and hence how big the trailing plant would need to be to keep up and whether or not this is technically feasible – hence field trials to test miner productivity, understand the rock size fractions that a continuous miner will generate, ore sorter productivity for these various size fractions, gold deportment (size fraction analysis, statistical distribution of gold throughout the gravel and basement horizons etc). If successful, this would result in very low operating costs. It should be said that we are not wedded to any particular concept and are actively conducting desk top assessments of all possible solutions and ranking them, though I must say the prospect of automated mining, low operating costs, water and chemical free processing and all with the gold reporting to secure concentrate bins without being touched by human hands is somewhat enticing. It’s then a matter of economics and matching this to the geology that we are learning about in real time – so two streams in parallel, geological understanding and economics. First and foremost, we need to continue to get a handle on geology / grades, bearing in mind the field and geological model has only had around 6 months of proper systematic exploration. As we gain confidence in the model, we’ll look at timely and prudent mining and processing technology testing in the field and in labs as required (test fast / test cheap) to understand how operational costs may play against the grades we are seeing and if we have a very large lowish grade system amenable to bulk scale mining or whether we have areas of higher grade that may require a selective and more conventional approach (or a bit of both 😊). We have some very smart employed to focus their attention on both potential outcomes, bearing in mind the dynamic nature of making plans against a background of continual geological learning. All knowledge we build up is important for submitting a mining operations plan, as such plans must outline in detail the mining, processing and rehabilitation methodology contemplated prior to gaining approval for mining to proceed.
Concentrate from a mobile plant consisting of mechanical sorters (and possible other technology) would largely be in the form of raw individual nuggets in the larger size fractions, with some ‘hot rocks’ captured also. Tails conveyor would capture any very large nuggets. The lower size fractions would rely on a ‘panel blow’ to ensure gold capture by blowing and area rather than a point, resulting in a ‘dirty con’. Given the total actual gold concentration in rock, even in high grade areas is only a fraction of total mass (it’d be really nice if it were larger !) an extremely high grade / low mass portion would be transported to another facility to be refined / smelted / sold as nugget samples etc.
That’s the current thinking, but tomorrow’s another day and Egina continues to throw up surprises every single day.
Hope this helps.”
3. From an anonymous shareholder:
“An oddity of handling dry granular materials in bulk is that conveyor discharge into one process step can be at right angles to whatever machine was loading the conveyor. So instead of having a very long or very wide conga line, the process steps could each be mounted on a self-propelled chassis, with geopositioning and laser-alignment tech used to keep everything creeping along in perfect military marching step.
To dispense with both the need for water and the need for a mill (!) are innovations either of which could make a mountain out of a molehill. Together, they represent synergies that even the smartest men in the boardrooms of Wall Street would literally commit murder to achieve. (And some of them likely have done so”
It LOOKS like Quinton Hennigh is moving along at a pace that will allow Novo to become a major miner, in itself a nearly unheard of transition from a Toronto Venture-listed “penny dreadful. (Think Kirkland Lake, as the newest and probably the best of the small majors.)
In a sense, I am irresponsibly resting on my lees, in that Novo has (if one can put up with the trolls) so many excellent critical thinkers, analysts, researchers and reporters outside of the company; and so many superb industry-leading experts inside of the company, that I really do not need to keep up with progress in the way that I do: I can take it as given that Novo’s management team is proceeding to work each of its discoveries to date–as well as continuing to identify and develop some unknown number and extent of new discoveries–in a way that will bring value to the shareholder. As well they should, given that most of them have skin in the game.”
(Note: This is not investment advice and I am not a geologist. This article is highly speculative and I can’t guarantee accuracy. Always do your own due diligence. I own a lot of shares of Novo Resources which I have bought in the open market and am thus biased. Novo is a passive banner sponsor on my site. )
Best regards,
The Hedgeless Horseman
Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/Comm_Invest
Follow me on CEO.ca: https://ceo.ca/@hhorseman
