I saw no mention about Lbe's good news over on your board so I thought I would just mention that yesterday the news came out that our third ball mill has now been commissioned and Lbe is now able to process 80 tonnes per hour or 1920 tonnes per dae and had additional capacity which was not tested.
The additional capacity of the Mill was completed on schedule to enable ore from the McWatters open pit to be concentrated starting the first week of June 2010. The drilling and blasting contractor has agreed to mobilize to the McWatters site on June 2 and mining is expected to begin shortly thereafter.
It is planned to exploit 1800 tpd. When the core of the pit is exploited, sublevel caving of the underground orebody can provide the tonnage necessary to continue to operate the Mill at the desired rate.
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I realize you likely do not own shares of our company but it is interesting to follow the beginning stages and see how our plans relate to how ISM plans to devellop their Langmuir property. Originally it was planned, and it is still talked about, that Langmuir would have an open pitt mine. We found that this method was not feasible (in fact a few years ago) McWatters also was going to be an open pit mine but when it came to construction we had wanted to go after the high grade ore first while Ni prices were high. Things change but getting after the high grade ore is important.
In the Shaw Dome, we are part of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt of which the Canadian Shield is a part. What is unique about the Shaw Dome is that the sulphur assisted the magma flow into pods being formed of Ni deposits. Many pods are not that huge (McWatters is a pod) containing Hazlewoodite. At the bottom of the pod they have discovered a vein of pentiandite grading 13% - 19% nickel which graded downwards to the west and the east of the floor of the drift. We knew that McWatters was an intrusive and this result is similar to the Redstone and somewhat to the Langmuir deposits. The old Langmuir mines were mined for some of their high grade ore and this and the GCR 43-101 (which they just received) shows the similarities of some of the deposits.
