Medinah Minerals (MDMN)

[RD759]

Nice numbers on the assay results, but without context they are meaningless and any self-respecting mining company would never put out such a pointless update. It is undoubtedly high graded and the relationship between this and the run of mine (R.O.M) grade is completely unknown and completely unexplained. Updates like this are amateurish and do more harm than good as they leave the company open to all the old charges it is trying to shake off.

As for being open-pittable - no is the short answer. LDM is a shear zone, a steeply dipping planar body with a geometry rather like a concrete paving slab stood up on end. All the mineralisation is in the slab, not in the rocks on either side. If you try to open pit this you will have to take rapidly increasing ratios of waste rock every time you bench down to take deeper parts of the slab. In a very short space of time the waste dilution of your mineralisation (still unquantified at this point) will render the whole thing uneconomic. The only way to work LDM is to take out the slab selectively to the exclusion of everything else by sub-level longhole stoping, hoping that the hangingwall and footwall are stable enough (or can be bolted back efficiently) not to run in when the firing starts. Even then you have to have a very good handle on grade control and must ensure all sequential drill rings are viable or you get into the realm of leaving low-grade pillars, which increases blast pattern complexity, slows down the operation and impacts on recovery.