that 13,400,000 tons proven is just ca 8.8% of 1 of 5 KNOWN veins on Baja 14-and they didnt even drill to the bottom of iron in those deeper holes 69-73- even though 73 holes without a dry hole is very impressive- in fact unheard of for the pps- they need to have an ongoing series of drilling as they forecast in the Sept 29 2011 PR
and the very first deeper drill holes uncovered another vein-so no telling how many more veins they might discover-THEY NEED TO DRILL MUCH MORE TO GET TRUE VALUE-though I am pretty sure Bao wanted to buy (before true value was known so they could get cheaper)- SOP for these large chinese steelmakers-and thus the visit to the mine by the vice chair of parent Baosteel China ca Nov 2011
They have the capacity to mine a Panamax every month imo and should have well over 500k tons-maybe 800k tons as grajek estimated if they kept mining this whole time.
As a post of mine in July showed its really hard to determine inventory based on historical ratios of 3-18 to 1-3 to 0-1mm ore w 1-3mm being ca 30% of 3-18 (they now focus on 1-10mm instead ?) and 0-1mm being 30% of 0-3mm-at those ratios there should be over 2.8 million tons produced!!!-
but I dont think it is anywhere near that amount-ratios have apparently changed-and trying to figure based on 0-1mm waste of 200k tons as of May -June introduces a possible wildcard- remember the pics showing a large swath of ground cover removed presumably along the line of the Coloso vein-some of that may have been fertilizer rich cover,thus contributing to the 200k tons of 0-1mm by May-June
but even if such is the case production was well ahead of shipping from the beginning-its just that w the 1st ship they didnt have the equip to process the 1-3mm (which was ca 75,000-90,000 tons after 1st ship-may have included 0-1mm),let alone 0-1mm-so there should reasonably be over 500k tons-pro is really hard to guess
from Nov 5, 2010 full official pro to April 2,2011 1st ship departure they thus produced 38524 tons 3-18mm reported for kriton (ship manifests vary slightly) plus ca 90k tons 0-3mm or 128 k tons in 5 full months equivalent-or ca 25k tons /month.
When they got the cat 375 w ripper bucket grajekk estimated based on comparative equip stats (stats I researched myself to verify) that alone would triple pro over the 4 original ex's-most of which were merely using hydraulic hammers-so that alone would be 75k tons/month-and they've added a lot of equip since then-but too many wild cards -because we dont know how much equip time was used to remove part of the overburden the full length or much of the Coloso and part of the Samson
absent overburden removal, they should easily be able to produce 75,000 plus tons /month-a maximum Panamax is 75k tons. If they had 400k tons (including the 200 reported k tons 0-1mm) May -June 2012 and added 75k /month since then by 7 = 525k tons possibly added since June 1 for total of 925k tons!
and I'm not even factoring in the two 330 ex's or the cat 365 ex. Again,overburden is a wild card and amount of 0-1mm overburden is a wild card and % of full pro utilized is a wild card. CWRN has indicated production has continued. Sure would be nice to get financials and amount of inventory.
