Benny,
As far as TNO's choice of the South African Bushveld Complex goes it is a very sensible choice - as well as the high grade ores there that are in easily separatable magnetitite there is also existing infrastructure close by, people in the country who have experience of producing Vanadium, and since Cyril Ramaphose took over a drive towards more honest and productive government which means not treating mining companies like the scum of the earth.
As far as the ease of the salt roasting process goes - it is the standard in the industry, which says a lot. It was very easy for Bushveld as we bought the existing producing Vametco operation in an incredible deal less than 10 months ago. However it took the previous couple of years to set up such a deal, which coincided helpfully with a 10 yearly minimum in Vanadium prices (see
https://thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-blog-1/post/from-iron-to-vametco-221 ) - as one of the people who used to work at a top level there told me at the last Vanitec meeting I attended 'Fortune (BMN's CEO) paid less for the company than they made in some quarters'.
One thing that has been abundantly clear in the 4 years I have been following Bushveld Minerals closely is that explorer valuations on AIM vs those on ASX are clearly massively different. It seems that AIM is much less understanding or tolerant of explorers and miners in general. In addition AIM is also home to some of the worst excesses of the shorters art and AIM investors are often caught out and spoofed by their actions.
As far as the tin assets thing - I don't think that it really had much impact - Bushveld knew that it needed to get the Tin assets to a critical mass to spin off, which they did by buying the Uis Tin min from the Erongo consortium - this had, under ISCOR been the largest hard rock tin mine in Africa in its time before the collapse of the International Tin Agreeement in 1985 caused tin prices to plummet. Anyways that's an aside, as a result of the deal to buy Uis, Erongo got 41M BMN shares which they were required not to sell for 6 months.
At 6 months + 1 minute Erongo started selling to get their cash and go and buy BMWs - the result a stock overhang which trapped the SP in the range 8.0-9.0p for 3 months as described in detail here:-
https://thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-blog-1/post/the-end-of-erongo-260
The BMN share price is still recovering from this point but still does not reflect at all the huge increase in Vanadium prices, or the large increase in ownership of Vametco that BMN have negotiated (from 26.6% to 59.1%, and now it looks likely to 75%), or the increase in production at Vametco (3000 tonnes last year, 3750 this, 5000 tonnes next year). This is perhaps because there has not yet been enough time to get Vametco profits onto BMN's accounts and published for all the world and his wifey to see. This is not far off now so any opportunity to take advantage of this clear lack of market awareness may be short lived.
