Originally posted by autocheker
The proposed high‐margin NdPr concentrate export strategy avoids the excessive capital cost of downstream processing and potentially accelerates the project into production.
I like this managment.
Note: This is what happens when, rather than a Geologist, you put a Mining Engineer in charge of development; sensible and logical progression instead of the usual premature and expensive aggrandisement.
Why anybody would want to borrow and spend a small fortune building a full blown processing plant, which is not needed because there is an abundance of excess refining capacity already sitting redundant in China ?
Doing it this way and not building a fully-blown refinery, will be far quicker with a lower Capital cost. And it will be much simpler for an unskilled workforce to operate an on-site concentrator, using well understood : jigs / flotation cells / HMS / electromagnetics or such combination to separate the value products into a product suitable for shipping to China. Don't worry too much about shipping cost, when a 30% concentrate is worth around $20k per tonne or more, that equates to almost half a million dollars per container load, so at around $5k, the cost of shipping per container from Angola to China is a relative pittance.
It is also good to see that the planned production rate is conservative and is a good fit for the mining fleet that is being suggested, I personally would rather see a Komatsu excavator, and I doubt if a 988 loader will be able to "Free dig" very much, but as I say the production rate is conservative so I see no problems in meeting it.
The quicker Pensana can get this mine into production and the less Capital it has to raise to do that, then the sooner this company will be able to pay off debt and the higher the share price will rise; which I assume is what MOST of us want ?
Next Step - Ore Reserve/Resource update and negotiations for the off-take
90,000t @ 20t/container = 4,500 containers @ $5k/container = $22.5M; you can do the revenue calculation yourself
