Back in March of 2012, we were awaiting to be connected to the grid (happened in May), we were also told the Shafted was 1 month ahead of schedule (April 1^st) and $2M under budget, etc...

From Aurcana re Shafter “commissioning of the processing plant is slated for April 1^st, we expect ramp up will take up to 90 days to reach its 1,500 tonnes per day capacity”.

Aurcana further announced that the open pit ore material on surface ~200,000 tonnes (lower grade: 6 oz per tonne – although mitigated by virtue of no mining costs - which was not included within the existing 43-101), would be processed first and enable a quick ramp up operation.

During his presentation in Geneva (April 2012), Lenic stated “We expect to reach Commercial Production in record time & expect to be pouring silver next week”...Etc, etc, etc...

Now in utter contrast to all of the above, we are a full year (at least!) behind schedule...

Reasons:

1. Work force issues.

2. Engineering issues (re-designing mine, as Block III turned out much bigger than anticipated - good news/bad news).

3. Awaiting of equipment, First it was the cyanide tanks, they were due in September (btw can anyone confirm their arrival and operational readiness?). Now we are held hostage by the need of filter presses????

Please help me with this one folks because I have real trouble understanding it...

My lack of comprehension is not with the work force & engineering issues, but what I fail to grasp is the equipment issue.

If these components (cyanide tanks and filter presses) were indeed crucial, necessary and essential to enable Shafter to operate (and ramp up to 1500tpd in 90 days), they would have been integral parts of the construction design and architectural specifications (blue print and machinery list).

Furthermore, they (cyanide tanks and filter presses) should have been ordered, manufactured, delivered and installed along with all the other components of the Shafter mill... in other words ahead of the start of production.

However, Shafter is supposedly producing 600tpd without these famously, missing in action, filter presses???

IF these were indeed essential to ramp up to 1500tpd, why would the CEO state, back in April of 2012,  that commercial production was imminent knowing fully well these components were months away from being part of the mill operation???

This is fully explainable for there are reasons (good or bad) for everything, unfortunately these reasons and explanations have not been shared with us... it sure would be nice to have a company providing a little info to its shareholders, so we would not have to guess, assume and speculate all the time! But that’s another story...

I once hypothesized (a fancy word for guessing) that the (cyanide tanks and filter presses) may have been late in the game due to re-design & re-specifications need. My speculation is that Aurcana may have been caught by surprise regarding the quantity of gold contamination it found at Shafter and proceeded (on the fly) to cancel and re-order specifically re-designed components (cyanide tanks and filter presses) to enable maximum recovery of the gold contaminants?

It could also be that it was just a major _______! (it starts with F and ends with UP).

However, this sort of incompetence would be uncharacteristic of Aurcana given its proven outstanding performance at LaNegra.

Either way AUN will get us there as nothing has been lost just postponed... It would be rather sweet it my guess were at least partly right...