Projected Capital Costs

This page will list estimated capital costs for the Chidliak project.

*Information in this current blog is based on information obtained up to mid 2018 and should be considered legacy at this time and should no longer be relied upon.*

Running total:
Item 1 - Road - CAD$150 million
Item 2 - Mill -  CAD$100 million
Item 3 - Mine - CAD$100 million
Item 4 - Camp - CAD$20 million
Contingency (~10%)-- CAD$40 million

Total -- CAD$410 million

Sustaining Capital --? These pipes are open at depth. They could do some serious underground development after a few years of open pit production. This would put some more capital requirement into the project.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Item 1 - Road

This it not a small item and a decision will need to be made to either use it as a seasonal ice road or turn it into an all season road.

The distance to Chidliak from Iqaluit is 120 km's as the crow flies. More likely, the distance will be closer to 150 km's.

Costing has been wide ranging with the information available, but the a good figure at this point in time would be CAD$1 million per km for an all weather road.
This item is also independent of parameters like production capacity, mine life, etc. Once a real cost is estimated, it should not change too much from PEA through to FS.

Item 1 Capital cost - CAD$150 million
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Item 2 Mill

This will be another significant cost to the project.  The question at this point is how much throughput can they have and still maintain a reasonable 10+ year mine life. Some of those answers will come out of the CH-7 bulk sample program.

The good news is that there are 2 active diamond mines under construction (Gahcho Kue - NWT, Renard - Quebec) and those will have FS/EPCM costing. The underlying structure of those mills should close resemble what Chidliak will need.

Sizing is a major factor here. Opinions have ranged from 400 ktpa to 1 mtpa. The higher throughput will bring cashflow closer to the present, the smaller throughput puts it further out into the future.

References

Renard Mill - Capacity - 2.2 mtpa - 2013 Capital cost = CAD$175 million
(Mill is designed to be scalable to 2.6 mtpa)

Gahcho Kue - Capacity - 3.0 mtpa - 2014 Capital cost = CAD$134 million
Description -- Kimberlite will be fed to a 3.0 Mt/a processing plant with three stages of crushing, DMS, and X-ray/grease diamond recovery circuits.

The larger mill at Gahcho is cheaper than the smaller mill at Renard. Not sure exactly why. It could be one of many things. The distance to transfer the parts to the site, the topography where the mill is going, the ground quality underneath the mill (rock versus overburden).

It is probably safe to say that Chidliak's 400K to 1M tpa mill will be less expensive than either of the ones above. Both sites above do have significant transfer costs that Chidliak will face also. (Gahcho has an ice road and Renard has a long all weather road). CAD$100 million is probably on the upside estimate.

Item 2 - Capital cost - CAD$100 million
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Item 3 Mining

There are many costs included here including - Equipment costs (trucks/shovels), overburden removal (Shore Gold's biggest capital cost), pre-strip (related to the allowable pit wall angle).

Both CH-6 and CH-7 have very low overburden (range between 20 metres and 0 (outcrop)
The equipment fleet will directly related to the mill production size (400ktpa to 1 mtpa).

Renard is mostly underground...so will have a very different and more expensive mining capital cost as they need to do lot of initial underground waste development. Equipment fleet will be very different. 
Gahcho is probably more useful when using a reference...although at this point, it is independent of commodity. Sabina's recent FS can be used as a reference as well.

More to come.....

Item3 - Capital cost - CAD$100 million



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Item 4 - Camp and housing

More to come......

Item 4 - Capital cost - CAD$20 million









-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



No comments:

Post a Comment