The really good news is that the plant is apparently fully ready to go on line, and has been since last Saturday. The plant management and the miners now have to reach agreement on how to fairly compensate the miner(s) who will be the first to put their ore thru the new process. Once that's done, LSTG can take its turn in the queue. Some difficulties remain:
It seems the miner whose ore is first in the hopper, one Sr. Jesus Manuel Quinones, is less than excited about being the test case for the plant re-start. He has balked at going first because he's been told by the plant manager that the only advantage to going first is that the metallurgical sampling [to support process optimization] will begin and may result in an improvement in process yield. Probably true, but also probably the wrong thing to say to Sr. Quinones. He is probably and quite understandably concerned that he may now be the victim of a sub-optimal process, in addition to having waited for six months for the plant to process his ores at all. He's also a member of the association of small miners, so I'd guess they have all heard of this situation by now.
There is now a later article on the El Monitor web page: The small miners met with the plant manager for two hours yesterday (18 December), without reaching an agreement. They are tentatively scheduled to meet with Sr. Alfredo Amaya Medina, who has apparently been selected as the plant operating contractor, at some time today (19 December). There appear to be three points at issue: (1) Contracts with the small miners need to be prepared and signed; (2)the miners want advances for the materials the miners deliver to the plant; and (3) the miners want a meeting between the representatives of the small miners association and Sr. Alfredo Amaya Medina.
There is an opportunity for LSTG in all of this: They could offer to go first and accept that they might be getting lower than optimal yields while the plant optimizes its process for the first 200-500 tons, in return for being put at the head of the queue for processing the rest of the 6000 tons of tailings they say they have sitting at the plant awaiting processing. Part of something is better than all of nothing. That would break the logjam and get LSTG some serious revenue at the same time.
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