Case study 04 / Mining, single-asset gold
The promoter's model showed a ten-year mine. Honeycomb found four years of ore.
An investor was deciding whether to fund a single-asset gold project. Honeycomb checked the promoter's throughput against the resource and its costs against operating reality. Neither held up.
What Honeycomb found
The mine life failed the throughput
At the promoter's own 150 ktpa processing rate, the resource was exhausted in about four years, not ten.
The schedule used ounces that are not there
Years five to seven depended on roughly 8 koz the current resource did not contain, with every unproven ounce treated as certain.
The costs were too low to hold
The US$925/oz AISC assumed a gravity-only circuit, faultless logistics, and no ESG cost. A realistic cost deck removed most of the margin.
The shift
About four years at the model's own throughput
Before: A ten-year mine life
Roughly 9 koz per year implied by the same grade and rate
Before: 5 koz per year, flat for a decade
Inflated once realistic costs and resource limits are applied
Before: NPV of US$48.7M at 8%
Outcome
The investor's question changed from how much to commit to whether the project was fundable at all, answered in a first-pass review.
An anonymised example of work done with Honeycomb. Figures describe this case and are not a general performance guarantee.
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