Same Final Pit. 19% More Ore in the Starter Pit. How?

But while the final pit barely changed, almost everything else did.

First, waste.

We recover essentially the same ore, for essentially the same value, but we move about one million tonnes less waste.

The strip ratio changes from 1.83 to 1.82.

And at the maximum-NPV shell, the difference grows to about 2.4 million tonnes.

That's 2.4 million tonnes you don't have to drill, blast, load, and haul.

Which means less fuel, fewer fleet hours, and less road time.

Second, the starter pit.

This is the highest-value core — the material you mine first, and the part that has a huge impact on your NPV.

In the multi-product model, the starter pit contains about 19% more ore, with 22% less stripping, and about 13% more value at the same prices.

So yes, the final pit may look almost identical. But the first few years can look very different.

Third, revenue by zone.

In the copper-gold zone, the equivalent model understates the value by almost 4%.

In the zinc-lead-silver zone, it overstates it by around 3.5%.

Across the whole deposit, those differences almost cancel out. The net difference falls below 1%.

And that is exactly why they're so easy to miss.

But a mining schedule doesn't process the average deposit every year. It moves through different zones at different times.

So in any single year, those errors may not cancel.

And fourth, the point we've spent most of today discussing: the risk profile.

So the takeaway is simple.

Same pit. But a different plan. A different annual budget. And a very different understanding of the project's risk.