Seems we might have just had a total eclipse of Saturn and Mars...

Seems we might have just had a total eclipse of Saturn and Mars or maybe even a black hole has sucked in Galaxy.

At Diggers last August Mark Zeptner said (from the 8:27 minute mark of the youtube clip) "The potential for Mt Magnet to have a large open pit at Eridanus and a relatively large underground at Galaxy [comprised of Saturn, Mars and Hill 50] will simplify the operation at Mt Magnet negating the need to jump from deposit to deposit which generally has been the history [at Mt Magnet]".

Clearly, MZ saw the combination of an open pit at Eridanus and the continuation of stoping at Mars and mine development at Saturn as a long term winner.

Here is the production chart he used at Diggers, noting that at that stage the numbers from the Eridanus open pit production were not included:


So back in August last year Ramelius considered it chartable that even without the Eridanus open pit they could pull around 100koz pa out of the various other pits at Mt Magnet over a 9 year period (from FY26). Note that this chart is originally from an ASX announcement from 12 March 2024 which explicitly says that "The Eridanus open pit cutback, a large potential cutback that represents 9 - 13Mt of ore feed, has not been included in the Mine Plan as that requires further drilling and follow up miningstudies."

At Diggers MZ assured punters that the numbers for an Eridanus open pit and an expanded mill would come out by year's end, if not before. But for whatever reason Ramelius held back releasing that work until mid-March. From that delayed presentation here is the comparable chart of production over the next 9 year period (from FY26). And behold the vanishing ounces from ex-Eridanus-open-pit Mt Magnet!!



At Diggers MZ's line was that over a 9 year period from FY26 to FY34 even without the Eridanus open pit they would extract about 893koz from Mt Magnet but by mid March that estimate excluding production from Eridanus open pit had dropped to about 507koz: that is a drop of over 40%!!! And from saying at Diggers last August - at around the 9:15 minute mark - that at Galaxy they were "into commercial production with no more upfront capex" by mid-March they had massaged the message into Galaxy having "exploration upside".

I might have all this arse about but it strikes me a bit wacky that a mining company can somehow lose 40% of its forward production from an established mining camp in the space of eight or so months. The only explanation I can think of is that by choosing to do the open pit at Eridanus Ramelius is losing access to almost as much production elsewhere: in the nine years to FY34 Eridanus open pit will produce 471koz but the reduction in production elsewhere in Mt Magnet will be 386koz in that same 9 year period (I'm using a 9 year period because I am too lazy to work out how much will be extracted from Mt Magnet deposits in FY25, sorry about that). Another factor is that when the Diggers numbers were done the gold price was around A$3,700 and its about a thousand dollars north of that so its not as if the reserves at Mt Magnet are evaporating due to the gold price.

However, just a warning: going on my recent form I've most likely got my logic wrong here and I encourage people to put me right.

And speaking of me stuffing stuff up, apologies to @Toomz for me answering a question over on the SPR threads that you did not even ask, and thanks to @Edmorgrimm for answering Toomz's actual question without blowing a raspberry in my direction.