will be nice to see that-the screened pile would be part of the ca 75k tons of sinter fines processed by the trommel from the now ca 210k tons of 0-1mm to possibly ship on next ship-hopefully near end of August. [Mex pres elections of july 2012 were contested in court-freezing applications plus they learned would need a permit for fert-see bingos 9-8-12 post- since it was treated as iron ore so they had to add USA to iron export permit,which was blocked by contested elections followed by lameduck govt]
I think there is a substantial amount of other inventory also,given the possible ratios of the 210k tons of trommel processed waste and the main products from which those by products came.
At one point when the main product was 3-18mm, the 1-3mm or 0-3mm byproduct seemed to be ca 30% of the main product and the 0-1mm ca 30% of that. I'm guessing the ratios change as mining conditions change -as they transitioned to the veins,so its impossible to determine how much inventory now though I think my guess of 9-28-11 was pretty accurate, as confirmed by subsequent events.
But if the ca 210k tons of waste 0-1mm was just 30% of production (instead of 30% of 30%) that would be 700,000 tons of production, with only 38524 plus 36002 plus 89k tons(6-25-12 PR) shipped or trucked so far (163526 tons), leaving 536k tons at the mine in inventory-
which seems kind of high even though I'm using much lower ratios than originally existed-so could the ratios have changed that dramatically? If the veins allow them to concentrate on higher ore I suppose that would reduce the "waste' though the waste -tested itself at 55.42% (posted by Rocket)- is not that much lower than the 58% benchmark used for international ore shipments-and doesnt bring a lot less than regular ore at current prices -so from a sale price point of view the waste ratio does not matter as much.
And the 30% ratio I used for the 700k tons I applied to the entire production from the beginning and not just to the vein production so to bring the inventory down to 7 months of non-vein work and ca 14 months of vein work w production heavily weighted to the vein work -as grajekk said the cat 375 could triple pro over the original 4 small excavators and they have added a lot more than the cat 375 so if vein pro has a weight factor of 4 by 14 =56 vs only 7 months for pre-vein work then pre-vein work is only 1/9 exactly of production-so the ratio since vein work started is all the more important and for simplicity pre-vein ratio can be ignored.
SO to cut the mine inventory in half to 350k tons would mean 41% of the production of 513526 tons (163526 ton shipped or trucked) is now in the ca 210k tons of 0-1mm waste to be trommel processed and that ratio (41%) seems to be even more bizarre (way too high-was at one point 9%- 30% of 30%) unless it has something to do w the overburden removal etc,which could also temporarily dramatically lower the vein production. Thus I dont have enough info to reasonably estimate inventory w a high probability-oh well you dont know until you try.
Anyway if ship left in August it would be 1st time 2 ships left within 2 months,even 3 and 4 months. 1st ship Kriton left ca Apr 2, 2nd ship Loreto Aug 7 2011, 3rd ship held up by new stricter permit requirements and an additional series of govt audits apparently designed to catch illegal south mainland cartel mines but a process indiscriminately applied to every miner who had previously shipped-so it left June 12, 2012 w ca 45k tons still at port.
