Minelab Fy23 Investor Presentation For 2024 - No GPZ 8000?

[Gold Catcher]

21 hours ago, Aureous said:

In-field performance needs to show an improvement and the ability to find more gold for the end-user. A big ML price tag means that the machine needs to pay for itself. The GPX6000 certainly does that....mine has paid for itself 3x over now in only 15 months. Last year I found 774 bits of gold and already so far this year I'm at over 1,000 bits. The new GPZ needs to show this kind of ability.....plus ergonomics and comfort. For starters, the weight needs to come down to the GPX6000's kinda level for me to even think about getting one. As usual, we'll see......

I remain curios to what extend the new GPZ will find what the old one didn't, leave aside ergonomics and weight. The current GPZ is a pretty darn good machine. Beating it is currently only possible with the GPX6000 on very small gold. For the new GPZ to beat the old one, and pay for itself with gold the old GPZ did not find, will be a very tall order.

Just my 2 c

GC

[Aureous]

3 minutes ago, Gold Catcher said:

I remain curios to what extend the new GPZ will find what the old one didn't, leave aside ergonomics and weight. The current GPZ is a pretty darn good machine. Beating it is currently only possible with the GPX6000 on very small gold. For the new GPZ to beat the old one, and pay for itself with gold the old GPZ did not find, will be a very tall order.

Just my 2 c

GC

The qualities, tech and engineering are already quantified to achieve this extra performance. These parameters have already been supplied to Nokta who are working on their upcoming prospecting PI detector. Code timings bias have a big role to play, along with coil energy increase and timing saturation to 'energize' deeper gold. Matching the correct types of coil design to these timings is also a large % of the potential increase. 

So, not actually a 'tall order', its a series of advances that were on paper several years ago and yet to be realized into an actual detector. Time will tell which company brings these parameters into fruition. I'm betting on Nokta being first, provided they add ALL of the key elements into the one machine. This will be the only way that Minelab and Garrett will be forced to 'catch up'. You can bet Nokta will release something way cheaper than the other 2 world players will compete with. I'm hoping (perhaps vainly) that this could be the 'big reset' in the Gold prospecting detector market.

[Gold Catcher]

Definitely some good stuff coming. But to significantly outperform the GPZ something majorly has to happen. I don't know to what extent ZVT can be further improved, but it is hard to imagine that there will be a detector that blows the GPZ out of the water. Also, it is harder and harder to find gold that was not already picked up by the very good machines that exist today. I guess every detector generation went through this cycle of "there can't be possibly something better". But unless something earthshaking is happening technology wise, I predict the margins will remain rather slim.

GC

[Aureous]

2 minutes ago, Gold Catcher said:

Definitely some good stuff coming. But to significantly outperform the GPZ something majorly has to happen. I don't know to what extent ZVT can be further improved, but it is hard to imagine that there will be a detector that blows the GPZ out of the water. Also, it is harder and harder to find gold that was not already picked up by the very good machines that exist today. I guess every detector generation went through this cycle of "there can't be possibly something better". But unless something earthshaking is happening technology wise the margins will remain slim.

GC

I remember this exact same argument being offered when the GP3000 came out. It only takes a 10% improvement in either depth or circuitry efficiency to achieve a performance increase relative to the amount of gold in our pockets. I'm still going over the same ground I detected almost 40 years ago....and I well remember telling myself back then: "I've found all the gold here, there's nuthin left".  Just a couple days ago, I was detecting a patch that was dozed and detected back in the late 90's and then rehab'd. I bet they thought they got it all then too, using SD2200's. The result was 5.5 grams. It was also a spot I'd detected heavily back over 10 years ago, resulting in almost an ounce. So, it doesn't take much improvement to get results....

[phrunt]

The detectors that weed out the last remaining dwindling gold in the ground also face the problem of less customers, the better detectors get in an odd way the less customers are available to sell them to.  That's what's happened with Africa.... the easy good gold is gone or going fast, the GPX 4500 and 5000 were extremely popular there, I even own an ex-African GPX 5000, I can only dream of the gold that 5000's found, more so than I'll ever find in my lifetime.

The 7000 from what I've been informed wasn't as popular but still a somewhat common detector to see, I would guess due to price or due to the value they see for the price over the 4500 for example, if most of the gold they care about can be found with a 4500 for a much cheaper price why buy a 7000.  The 6000 comes out to specifically target that market and falls flat on its face in Africa, it didn't take off like hoped as investor reports have often stated sales are not as good as hoped for the 6000 and now the investor reports are saying we need to move off the African market and focus on expanding into other markets.  This can't be due to conflict and so on in parts of Africa, it's a big place with many countries that are heavy gold producers and not all are problematic yet the African sales died.

The African market has its problems outside of prospecting that has caused some sales issues but the main reason I think is these people need to make a living off the gold they find, they don't get paid properly for the gold they do find so they need to find even more to make it worthwhile, the bigger easier bits are gone and they don't want to scratch around like chickens plucking out a 0.03 of a gram piece so once the easier gold the 5000 can find is gone so is the gold rush. 

The Africans didn't get paid per gram the prices we can get if we sell gold, they got a pittance for it, they often had commission to the local rogues that controlled the area too, they sold their gold illegally to middle men that sneaked it out of the country.  If they tried to sell it the legal way it's not worth being a small-scale miner, so they went black market but still the price per ounce was small so they had to find a lot of gold to make it worthwhile.  Here is a older story on it that's worth reading

Gold worth billions is smuggled out of Africa - new analysis (reuters.com)

The depth on the bigger deeper gold I believe the 4500 still beats the 6000, it helps with its large range of coils but it can support large coils so depth on big gold is still the 4500 and I'm sure the Africans worked that out quick smart.

The funny thing about the 6000 is they intended it to be the good seller in Africa, it turns out its the better seller to other places where the people are trying to scratch out the remaining gold the other detectors missed by its ability to find very small and odd gold that was missed by previous models for various reasons and you see that with people selling the 7000 which is the top of the range to I guess you could say downgrade to the 6000 to find these smaller bits of gold that are left.  For us in countries outside of Africa it's been a good success story, more so than Africa but we are a smaller group of people so the revenue wasn't as hoped.

[Aureous]

5 hours ago, phrunt said:

The funny thing about the 6000 is they intended it to be the good seller in Africa

The RRP for the 6000 and 7000 is way above what most Africans can afford. Back when the big Sudan-Chad-Sthn Egypt gold rush occurred a decade ago, the majority of the big dollar detector sales went to Arab buyers who 'rented' or took share positions in their use by African local prospectors. Now that the easy gold is gone, these partnerships and rentals are now far less important, hence the lacklustre sales performance. The GM1000 is a far more logical seller (and was extremely well designed for said purpose for Africa) but has a far lower profit margin. Steve's original <US$2000 PI proposal would have suited the African market perfectly. Sad that no manufacturer has come to the party....the Whites TDI-SL attempted it, but manual GB and lower sensitivity detracted its appeal in Africa, along with poor marketing/promotion efforts. Nokta still seems likely to be the only world class manufacturer to bring such a detector to market, even though the 'big' African goldrush is over....

[phrunt]

Yes, My GPX 5000 was an Ex-hire unit from an African dealer.  These photos of it were taken by him before sending it to NZ.

Note how the African's don't care about settings, the dealer sets them up for them to use and marks out the switch positions in case they bump them, I guess.

They have a pretty rough life, I just can't see a GPX 6000 standing up to the heavy duty use the African prospectors put onto a detector.

I had mine set to Minelab for a refurbish and new housing, as you can see by its pictures above it wasn't in good condition.  

It came out nice after Minelab NZ got their hands onto it for a check and refrub.

 

 

[schoolofhardNox]

Their next detector should be a (technology) upgraded Excalibur. Maybe tweak some what users didn't like about the ergonomics, etc.

[phrunt]

Then.... 

and now

 

[Skookum]

On 9/1/2023 at 7:51 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

Maybe lower prices on existing product as sales decline.

Very prescient, as it seems to be happening now.

On 8/31/2023 at 12:32 AM, phrunt said:

I'm not overly fussed about no new GPZ coming in the near future, I highly doubt I'd be interested in it…

After having had both the GPZ and the 6000, it would be really hard to go back to any kind of heavier machine. The 7000 is cumbersome and unpleasant anywhere but in open spaces and the harness is a pain. What are chances that a replacement isn’t heavier than the 6000?  Even if not, the price is assured to be astronomical and dissuasive for us novices.

Sure would love to have a MF Gold Monster or to see what an updated SDC with a faster processor could do.