Bear in mind also that the Finnish project was halted even before the GFC as its economics didn't stack up. If its entirely dependent on reduced capex, it was likely marginal to begin with.
That's not quite right - the initial DFS came back negative but the project wasn't shelved then. The DFS was revised and optimised and the project was considered viable, but the GFC then intervened and we all know the rest.
It turned out to be a very smart move as it let them pick up Luikonlahti, saving them over US$100M.
It's not entirely dependent on reduced capex but it was definitely fairly marginal until they got Luikonlahti. This was because the deposit is so small that the capex was a significant portion of the total life-of-mine sales revenue. I don't remember the exact figures but the processing plant was going to be something like US$130M compared to projected life-of-mine revenue of just under $1B. And that's just for the processing plant, not counting capex for the development of the mine itself.
So getting Luikonlahti for e7M immediately made the economics pretty positive.
How the cobalt credits will affect that I'm not sure. I don't know what's going on with that. It may actually be a function of the processing plant (ie the original planned one might have been able to handle the cobalt but Luikonlahti isn't set up for it?). I have no idea, just speculating.
Anyway I'm tipping the project is a goer and they are going to announce a partner of some sort. We'll find out soon.
URL Price at posting:
11.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
