If you own a gold stock that hasn’t ripped over the past two months, you’re in the wrong stocks. I’m aware that the GDXJ was closer to $160 the last time gold was at these levels (2011) vs. $39 today but it was at $30 last month. If the larger producers are “ripping” 30% the higher beta small caps are generally up considerably more.
NEM biggest gold miner…
has done nothing amongst other top miners like Gold (Barrick). The industry stocks 95% are in the shitter, no doubt about it!!!
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I’m starting to understand why you cling on to BB’s every post. You don’t even understand how to access archived contributions. That wasn’t a personal letter it was a public post. You’re an editor, right?
To your point, I could care less about BB’s personal attacks, the point of sharing this post was to highlight BB’s defense of what was a pretty obvious fraud. You asked for me to “point out any one of my specific claims against BB”. I have 100’s more but, considering you can’t even understand the context of what I’m posting (for your benefit) nor have a basic nderstanding of how to access archived posts, its pretty clear you are going to suffer the same fate as BBs previous “flock.”
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Sorry, but it’s apparent that you don’t have the capacity to understand much about me, or others. If you read my post to BB, then it should have been clear what I inquired about …
That meant any of the false claims you’ve made against BB over the past year or two about him falsely promoting the stocks (MDMN or AUMC), which is far from the truth. I’m not going to go digging thru any archives, cuz I already know what’s true. That’s your job if that’s what you want to do, don’t push that off on me. It’s funny how you try to claim that I don’t know how to access archives, lmao! It’s also demented.
Oh baldy, you are such a hopeless distorter of the truth. BB always includes the disclaimer that it’s a possible outcome, not a matter of fact. My question doesn’t include your personal grudges from 2015, which you’ve been harboring for at least a decade.
Baldy, you are skilled at deflection, if that’s what you wanna hear. But if you want to plaster accusations against BB claiming that he makes false “pie-in-the-sky” projections, then you need to quote him accordingly, which is unlikely. If you make the claim (or quote him) while ignoring his disclaimer, then it’s obvious that you’re just trying to slander him.
And yes, I am an editor. Your sentence above is incorrect. It should read, “I couldn’t care less.” And it wasn’t BB’s attacks, the personal attacks were all yours.
By the way: Happy Winter Solstice & Merry Xmas!
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Gee, a longer novel than BB.
This is getting ridiculous by both of you.
It’s a piggy bank investment and hope it break-evens or I get a windfall and get lucky at this point. Price of gold? Yes, highly dependent on this and this is where I am most hopeful. 
TDK
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The winter solstice marks the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. Incidentally, it also marks the longest read of the year here! lol. zzz
Let’s see if MC gives us an early Christmas present and release the quarter update sooner
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My personal opinion these quarterly updates just won’t cut it anymore. Maurizio needs to ink some kind of a deal (financing JV, etc…) with another company and deliver some blockbuster news. Only then will the SP move north. Someone unloaded 25k + shares and AUMC is down 48% at .18. The few here are selling and moving on as the time line has become ridiculous, both stocks are in the pits because of this. I am not trying to be negative but realistic and logical.
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Sometimes these updates make me scratch my head. This is why the deal did not go through with Gold Logic.
“Originally, our intention was to employ gravimetric processing methods and then sell the concentrates to Goldlogic, as laid out in our MOU and term sheet. Due to the refractory nature of our ore preventing gravimetric concentration, we are unable to proceed with our agreement with Gold Logic.”
But Gold Logic wants to make money just like any company on this Universe. BB has stated that a flotation plant is more economical than the above. My question is why Gold Logic would not want to still strike a deal?? it make no sense for them to walk away. Things that make you scratch your head and say WTF!!
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Hi Hulk,
As far as Hulk’s comment on Goldlogic, their deal was predicated on the DL2 Vein ore being amenable to whatever type of “gravity separation” methodology THEY prefer to use. Recall how the ore needed to be shipped to 2 “specialist” labs in Peru for testing. There is a wide array of these from simple shaker tables, to jigs and sluices, to spiral concentrators, to cyclones and even centrifugal concentrators using what amounts to be a “centrifuge”. Most of these deal with near surface “oxide ore” that is “coarse” in nature.
At the level of the vein we’re in right now at the DL2 Vein (1.840 meters above sea level) we’re dealing with “sulfide ore” which almost always has a “refractory” nature to it. This means that the gold particles can be tightly bound to sulfides, carbon containing materials, or a variety of other minerals such as arsenopyrite (“arp”) which is also a “sulfide”. When this is the case, “froth flotation” is almost always the methodology chosen especially if the size of the gold particles is small i.e. “fine” or “ultrafine”. “Gravity separation” and “froth flotation” are the 2 inexpensive ways to separate a fair amount of the impurities within your gold ore from the gold itself. It doesn’t matter WHICH one works the best as much as one of them working well. The refining steps further down the line are more expensive, so it’s nice to get rid of as much of the impurities as possible AS INEXPENSIVELY AS POSSIBLE early on. This way less TONNAGE of ore needs to be exposed to the more expensive processes. The discards/”tailings” from the froth flotation process will be stored on-site at the ADL. These “tailings” do not have to be TRANSPORTED anywhere or subjected to further purification. ENAMI will pay handsomely to have the miner store these discards/tailings on-site instead of having them store them on Enami’s premises.
The artisanal miners at the DL2 Vein had a tough time dealing with the “fines” and “ultra-fines”. Their shipping grades could have been even higher than 64 gpt gold if they had access to today’s froth flotation methodologies designed specifically for “fines” and “ultra-fines”. The DL2 Vein ore just happened to be much more amenable to froth flotation than to whatever gravity separation methodology that Goldlogic was insisting on.
Interestingly, the ore found in Auryn’s Merlin 1 Vein did really well (over 90% recovery) with a gravity separation technology devised by Sepro-Falconer. I couldn’t tell you why Goldlogic insisted on a certain gravity separation methodology being used unless they might have a financial interest in getting that methodology to be used by more gold producers.
Over the course of over 2 years, the Mining Engineering Department at the University of San Sebastian designed a customized “flow sheet” outlining the most efficient way to treat the DL2 Vein ore so as to maximize the recovery rate and grade of the final product i.e. a very high-grade “float concentrate”. This product may be in high demand by several “Goldlogic-type” operators that operate their own “carbon in leach” facility. It may or may not be Enami.
All we know for sure is that if Auryn builds their own froth flotation facility and stores the discards/tailings on-site at the ADL plateau, then Auryn can capture an “EXTRA” $5,000 per tonne in profits. This represents an “EXTRA” $100,000 per 20-tonne truckload. This suggests that whatever flotation “flow sheet” the engineers came up with, it must work pretty well. I would assume that over the course of the combined mine lives of Auryn’s 7 Main Veins, that would amount to perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars (a guess) of “EXTRA” profit over and above what Enami would have paid if we had them do the froth flotation and tailings storage on their premises.
All this speculative banter of "what if’s feels IMO like cathartic therapy for losing thousands and thousands of dollars over three decades. It’s nolonger a back door paper shuffle, it’s just chipping away on a scale too small to actually go anywhere. Hope the banter makes everyone feel better if that’s what you need. Happy New Year ad congrats on another bucket of coal
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This is the heart of the matter. $5,000 extra savings makes you wonder just how high the transportation costs currently are. Sounds very likely that your $900 AISC estimate was way off the mark. The only way you can come up with a savings cost per ton as high as $5k is if the transportation costs were through the roof.
Which makes sense, since the ENAMI mill was so far from the mountain, including the switchback roads from the mine to the highway. The higher the grade of the ore they ship, the more $ per truckload. And of course the trucks have to travel there loaded & return with much less weight.
Baldy, in your conversations, did you ask which ENAMI mill they would be using ? Cause the closest I was able to find was 426 km, (found this April 2022), hopefully they have a new closer one. That is a LONG way to go.
I did not. I also failed to ask the question as to how or why they were making such a major company decision on such a small sample size. I should have. However, my general sense was that they felt Enami was not going to “play fair” or “pay fair” in any scenario.
The $5,000 per ton in “direct financial impact” has always been somewhat confusing. I understand that simply subtracting the grade that Enami reported (57.5 gpt) vs. the lab in Peru (128.5 gpt) is the equivalent of 2.2 ounces per ton or ~$5,000 per ton in “financial impact” but that liner equation is VERY misleading. It DOES not take into account any other costs (transportation, processing, cost of capital/financing, permitting for tailings disposal, etc, etc, etc).
The fact that some here are putting a lot of weight on $5,000 a ton while the company is simply subtracting the grade diffrerenial between Enami and a lab in Peru on an infintessimally small “experimental batch” and then multiplying that difference (70 gpt) by spot gold is, candidly, pretty comical (which is partly why I’m here).
Again, making existential company decisions based on a 200lb sample is analagous to analyzing a single snowflake to determine avalanche risk. I believe Maurizio and team are making the decision to avoid Enami b/c of concerns that they may lose money transporting that distance with any grade below 20gpt. As I’ve said, and I believe Maurizio would agree, a 20gpt average grade over any decent tonnage would/will be a very welcome outcome.
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Per my earlier post, just look at BB’s last post. He assumes that there’s some magical floatation flow sheet that AUMC is following to determine the extra $5,000 per tonne in profits (not financial impact). This is exactly what happens when peeps fixate on the granual details of company updates without using common sense.
He’s your elaborate “flowsheet” equation.
Enami reports 57.5 grams per ton on the bucket of ore they receive
Peruvian lab reports 128.5 grams per ton on the bucket of ore they receive
The difference in grades (by extraploating a ton of ore from 200lbs of rock) is 71 grams per ton
71 tonnes equals 2.29 ounces…2.3 ounces multiplied by the spot of price of gold (~$2100) is ~$5,000
$5,000 of “direct financial impact.”
I keep trying to “reverse engineer” management’s statement, so that I could get a better understanding of the breakdown of this “DIFFERENTIAL”.
The University of San Sebastian’s Mining Engineering Department has been fine-tuning the most efficient “customized flow sheet” for the froth flotation of the ore from Auryn’s DL2 Mine for a little over 2 years. Whatever they came up with is “baked into the cake” in that $5,000 per tonne “EXTRA” income figure.
Hey Mom look, I’m an engineer!
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The AUMC Board of directors released their update to inform us that there was a significant difference in grams captured using the froth flotation process based on a small sampling of ore. The difference on that small sampling indicated a $5,000 per ton benefit. No one here should believe that every ton shipped after going through the flotation process is going to have $5,000 of additional benefit.
The only thing we should take from the Boards update is that they have decided that the financial benefit derived from processing the ore through the flotation process is well worth the investment in the facility.
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100%
But, to be clear, the difference in grades and the supposed $5,000 delta, is not specific to any froth floatation process nor evaluation. We’re talking about something as simple as two different grades coming from Enami vs. a lab and then trying to extrapolate the “economic impact” by subtracting the two different grades and multiplying by spot. The Peruvian lab results and grades have nothing to do with recoveries or any other associated costs specific to a froth flotation circuit.
Also to be clear, even AUMC isn’t claiming the $5,000 to be a net result (profits), that would be another embellishment originated on this board. Implicitely, the $5,000 would be gross, not net of all of the other related expenses of “doing it yourself.”
In other words, this $5,000 headline number is only getting “play” b/c of the usual cast of characters who have run out of things to “cling” to.
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It’s interesting how different people, with different experiences in the mining sector and different reasons for participating in this investment forum, look at the very same text of a press release/quarterly update and come up with grossly different conclusions. Shouldn’t LOGIC play a more prominent role in interpreting the content of a press release rather than inherent biases?
For example, management described the ore they sent to the Codelco/Enami DIRECT SMELTING facilities as an “experimental batch” with no indications as to the tonnage involved. To a naysayer, this choice of phraseology got interpreted as a “bucket of ore” that got sent to the smelter and as it being an unreliable “infinitesimally small sample”. The accusation was also made that management fraudulently removed some of the impurities from the ore sample in order to enhance the resultant smelter results. This later led to the characterization of Auryn’s decision to build their own froth flotation system as being a hasty multi-million-dollar decision based on insignificant data. All of this being based on the chosen phraseology of an “experimental batch”.
What would an approach involving LOGIC assume? Some very smart Professional Geoscientists (P. Geos) and Professional Engineers (P. Engs) decided how large of a sample size should be sent in to the smelter in order to base a multi-million-dollar decision on. There is no LOGICAL reason to send in an inadequate sample size with no statistical validity.
In the most recent press release dated October 9, 2023 management stated that after “RIGOROUS DATA ANALYSIS”, the Auryn BOD concluded that the correct decision was for Auryn to build their own froth flotation circuit on-site at the ADL and to dispose of the discards/tailings on-site, instead of paying Enami (as part of Enami’s fee) to store the tailings on their premises. How can the geoscientists and engineers perform a “RIGOROUS DATA ANALYSIS” based on an infinitesimally small “bucket of ore”? If you review the Curriculum Vitae of the 2 new BOD appointees, as well as that of Maurizio, why would they have any part of any behavior like they are accused of participating in? Maurizio owns 60% of the Auryn shares, why would he commit millions of dollars to a project based on the smelting results from smelting a “bucket of ore”?
In that same press release, management cited a $5,000 per tonne “DIRECT FINANCIAL IMPACT” associated with their decision to build their own froth flotation facility rather than use Enami to do the froth flotation process and store the tailings on Enami’s premises. Does the phraseology “DIRECT FINANCIAL IMPACT” of $5,000 per tonne, after performing this “RIGOROUS DATA ANALYSIS”, imply to you a willy-nilly estimation of economic effect or something that was carefully studied prior to making this multi-million decision?
WHAT MIGHT A “DIRECT FINANCIAL IMPACT” ANALYSIS LOOK LIKE IN THE GOLD ORE MINING AND PROCESSING INDUSTRY?
The LOGICAL interpretation would be that they studied the entire mining and ore processing process from start to finish before arriving at that $5,000 per tonne figure. Whether Enami did the froth flotation process or Auryn did it themselves, the intra-adit mining of the ore would be the same. The miners blast the 2 “working faces” of level 3 of the DL2 Mine, they scoop up/”muck” the ore with a wheel-loader, and transport the ore to the on-site crusher where the ore is crushed to the specific size deemed to result in the highest “recovery” for the froth flotation process.
If the ore is to be shipped to Enami for froth flotation then it is loaded onto a truck awaiting shipment to the nearest Enami froth flotation facility at Chancon-Ranconagua i.e. the “Los Robles” facility. If the ore is to be froth-floated by Auryn on-site then it would be temporarily stockpiled awaiting the completion of the facility. Up until this point, the costs for mining and crushing the ore are identical and there has been no beneficial “DIRECT FINANCIAL IMPACT” realized. The $5,000 “DIRECT FINANCIAL IMPACT” would occur from this point forward.
No matter where the froth flotation process occurred, the next step in the ore refining process is nearly always a “CARBON IN LEACH” facility or a “CARBON IN PULP” facility followed by the final destination being a SMELTER. If management chose Enami as the agent to do the froth flotation process, then Enami would be the default option for the “CIL/CIP” process and the SMELTING process. If the choice made was to build your own froth flotation facility, then the option would be open as to where to execute the “CIL/CIP” process as well as SMELTING. Enami may or may not be the choice made for these processes. Maurizio is on the record for saying that the overall goal was to do all pre-smelting processes on-site. SMELTERS are billion-dollar facilities and there are only 7 in all of Chile with 4 owned and operated by Codelco.
THE ECONOMICS OF ON-SITE FROTH FLOTATION
First and foremost, froth flotation (FF) is INEXPENSIVE COMPARED TO THE CIL PROCESS AND SMELTING. For the miners that could afford to build their own FF facility, after factoring in CAPEX and OPEX costs, it costs only about $10 per tonne to “float” the ore. The average CONCENTRATING results is 4-fold with a range of 2 to 20-fold increases in gold grade post-flotation. The product of the FF process is called the “FLOAT CONCENTRATE”. You can choose whatever estimated “head grade” or “run of mine grade” that Auryn averages over time, but if, for example, it comes out to be 40 gpt gold, then the “float concentrate” might be expected to be around 160 gpt gold. It could be more or less than that depending on how well the ore responds to FF in that 2-fold to 20-fold range. MANAGEMENT KNOWS THESE NUMBERS (head grade and FF efficiency) BUT WE DON’T, ALL WE HAVE TO GO BY, FOR NOW, IS THAT $5,000 per tonne DIRECT FINANCIAL IMPACT figure. We are not a party to the details of this “RIGOROUS DATA ANALYSIS”. All we know, is that the BOD UNANIMOUSLY voted to build their own plant because of this $5,000 per tonne “BONUS”.
TRANSPORTATION COSTS AND THE TONNAGE OF MATERIAL BEING SHIPPED
One thing that we do know, is that the TRANSPORTATION COSTS involved in doing your own FF on-site is going to be a lot less than if everything that came out of the adit got shipped to Enami. When you state that the average CONCENTRATING FACTOR for FF is 4-fold, this means that three-fourths of the ore mined is going to consist of the discards/tailings associated with the FF process. This material is not going to be TRANSPORTED anywhere. It will never be exposed to a somewhat expensive CIL process nor will it ever be SMELTED. Mining is all about getting rid of the worthless component of the ore (the “gangue”), as early on in the process as possible and as inexpensively as possible. This $5,000 per tonne DIRECT FINANCIAL IMPACT figure is going to be made up of many COMPONENTS.
The question arises as to what management was referring to when they used the phraseology “DIRECT FINANCIAL IMPACT”. Were they referring to PROFITS? Were they referring to higher REVENUE or lesser COSTS? I couldn’t tell you. It’s a very large number though.
Going back to the use of LOGIC when you read about differing interpretations of the exact same press release. Does it make sense that extremely successful management and BOD members would lie on a press release and risk losing all that they have accomplished through the years?
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And here we are ! End of the year with no Xmas present!