It is likely the commissioning can not come quickly enough for Glass Earth.
The exploration company's cash in hand had fallen below $1 million by December last year, the company having spent more than $24 million since dual listing on the Toronto and New Zealand stock exchanges in October 2006, focusing mainly on exploration around Otago.
Creating cash flow from its boutique mining ventures in the Ida Valley and Ophir is crucial to Glass Earth's future, the explorer to date having only posted losses.
Glass Earth chief executive Simon Henderson was upbeat about the consistent but unspecified amount of gold being recovered daily from the McAdies prospect in the Ida Valley.
"I'd like to see the second GRU [gold-recovery unit] start tomorrow. But we're likely to see that happening by the end of February," he said yesterday.
Glass Earth is working with joint venture partner Dunstan Mining in the Ida Valley and is permitted for mining at the McAdies prospect.
The explorer was "almost 95% of the way there" to get mining permits in place for the Gun Club and Nevills prospects in the Ida Valley, Mr Henderson said.
At present there is a 60-80cu m-per-hour gold-recovery unit operating at McAdies, achieving 40cu m per hour, and Mr Henderson hoped a second unit would also have an up to 80cu m-per-hour capacity.
"A lot depends on the ground conditions when it comes to [cu m-per-hour] recoveries," Mr Henderson said.
He has said in the past 2010 would be crunch time for Glass Earth in terms of generating its own cashflow and in December, he forecast the company had enough funds to continue into "early 2010", a forecast which remained unchanged yesterday.
"We're getting gold on a daily basis and are meeting [gold-recovery] expectations," Mr Henderson said of the McAdies prospect, while declining to reveal details.
In early December, Glass Earth posted a third-quarter loss of $218,000, leaving it with working capital of $934,000.
A month earlier, it had completed a private placement in Canada, raising $640,000.
For its previous full year to December 2008, Glass Earth spent $4.1 million on exploration and booked a $1.3 million loss, having a year earlier recorded a $2.68 million loss.
In mid-November last year, Glass Earth recovered a small amount of gold from its other Central Otago prospect, near Ophir, with 50:50 joint venture partner Ophir Gold Ltd, a private company, following bulk-sampling tests under its extended exploration permit.
Unlike the Ida Valley's alluvial (loose) gold deposits, the Ophir deposits are set in hard rock, which is crushed for extraction.
Mr Henderson said the results from bulk testing at Ophir had been sent to a Canadian company to determine the recovery rates and assist in the design of a bigger gold-recovery plant.
Before resuming work at Ophir, Glass Earth also had to determine the size of the gold target, Mr Henderson said.
While the firm had not applied for a mining permit from Crown Minerals for Ophir, the exploration permit allowed for continued bulk testing.
