Trying to ramp two mines at the same time was nothing short of hubris, especially in a tough funding environment. I guess in mgmt's defense, money wasn't tight when those plans were made, but there was still zero room for production obstacles.....and I've never seen any mine not run into 10x the problems one could expect. So without doubt, they found themselves in a cash flow insolvency situation. That's the ideal bk candidate from a vultures point of view. I think the assets are great.....with we were looking at better macro conditions in the gold markets right now, but really any serious buyer is no doubt going to be looking at the longer term strategic picture. I was reading an interview with Nolan Watson from Sandstorm the other day. He was talking about how the relative small size of Sandstorm makes them very agile compared to the larger streaming companies that need to do much larger deals to move their needle - and he threw out 750 mm as a comp. Burnstone would potentially be a great property to acquire via a streaming deal. Whether the location in S.A. would make that a non-starter for a streamer, I really don't know - it's entirely possible. I still go back to Barrick's Pascua Lama project when trying to assess the value at Burnstone. Pascua Lama is about a 20 mm ounce resource - it's a little bigger plus it has silver credits, but Barrick has spent close to 3 billion and 20 years....and they aren't even close to production...and the logistics of a project at that altitude and remoteness are daunting. Next to Pascua Lama, Burnstone looks like a relative bargain at a billion.
