I told the board that I would report back so here is my report. I have not scheduled a visit to the mine yet. I am waiting for a call back from Walt to schedule the visit, but I will most likely wait as the mill is not running right now while improvements are being installed.
Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to talk with a key person at Copper King for about half an hour. I am going to withhold the name for now. Here are my notes, still in very rough form, from the conversation. I haven't had a chance to clean them up further yet.
After this conversation, I am feeling much more confident in what is taking place at Copper King and will continue to invest in the company as I have funds available.
- Installing additional flotation cells that arrived yesterday
o 2 banks of 6 which will be used as scavenger cells in what sounds like a final circuit to give the chemicals more reaction time with the ore
o This will increase the reaction time from 12-13” to 25”
o As tonnage increases retention decreases so more time is better
o As they have increased production, percentages have declined. The new cells are being installed to get the percentages back up.
- Have installed paddles on 2 of 6 roughing cells
o The delay in putting them on, according to him, had to do with safety for the purposes of how they have to obtain their samples while working with fine tuning the mill processes.
- Most recent lot of 500 tons has all been shipped as of about 14 days ago
- The mill has been down for the last 9-10 days. Was up for a little while yesterday or today but is back down for the installation of the additional flotation cells
- _____ says that he doesn’t have that many shares in CPRK – but I didn't find out how many he does have.
- 3 smelters in North America that mines could send ore to (SLC, AZ, AZ)
- When they are loading trucks, they pretty much know where the ore is headed – AZ
- Smelter in Canada is Trail BC?
- Smelter in Mexico
- In the future, they could potentially sell concentrate and products to places overseas, like China.
- Stated that they have not been as diligent as they need to be in keeping investors updated and they are going to correct that.
- They cannot talk about shipments and payments because it would give away pricing information that is between them and their buyer. They would only be able to release this kind of information with the buyer’s approval. My guess is that they don’t release general financial info because it would not be too pretty right now.
- Said that people get upset with Mark and that Mark has his shortcomings, but he also has a stubbornness that he feels has benefited them and helped them get through these difficult times and has gotten them to the point where they are now. He doesn’t think too many people could have kept things moving as Mark has.
- Sees the light at the end of the tunnel.
- They brought consultants in, made a plan, and are executing the plan. I did not find out when the consultants were there. Anyone know?
- Feels more positive about many things than he has in a long time
- Not happy about dealing with some of the equipment issues they are dealing with right now in the dead of winter.
- They have had many delays as a result of vendors. He gave an example of the 5 month delay they had in getting the mill up and running as a result of GE (he thinks it was GE) who supplied the electric starters for the ball mill – 4 months to get the starters and one month for the vendor to get them working correctly.
- Coming over the top of the mountain. He seems confident they are going to make it through this period/stage with the cash they need to get through this critical juncture.
- Need more people at the level of David McMullin and Mark, etc., but they made the decision not to at present because it would be quite expensive.
- CPRK sells to a commodities dealer. The commodities dealer sends them the trucks to load. They seem to be quite content with their current arrangement.
- He did state that Copper King has had its problems and they haven’t done everything perfectly.
- Thinks the investors just need to be patient as they have not been in production very long and they are working very hard to execute their plan.
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