It should be stating the bleeding obvious' to say that the most efficient method of recovery must be used during the testing and evaluation phases of an orebody. Furthermore, the company will be literally throwing away money by not using the most efficient recovery plant during mining._x000D_
This is especially true in the case of a low concentration/high value commodity such as diamonds._x000D_
Unfortunately, this economic recovery criterion is not always the driving force. Some inexperienced companies think that they can preserve capital by using cheaper, and generally less efficient, recovery plants to mine their product. This philosophy is invariably a fallacy._x000D_
Furthermore, it is also important to use the correct sized plant for the proposed task. It is no use trying to use a small testing plant to treat large quantities of ore, as this may result in loss of recovery efficiency. The converse is equally true._x000D_
FORMAL CITATION:Fried, T R, 2004. The use of DMS plants versus other types of plants for diamond recovery, in Proceedings Metallurgical Plant Design and Operating Strategies 2004, pp 151-158 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).