@apkjm .......apologies in taking so long to get back to you....

@apkjm .......apologies in taking so long to get back to you.

Mining your own deposit right next to the processing plant is always going to be the cheapest, most profitable option. That is how most mining/processing takes place around the world.
IMHO it is why WFE have such short term contracts in for buying ore, and are highlighting their own exploration tenements as the future goal for mining. The people running this know mining their own is more profitable.

Buying in outside 3rd party ore, involves the cost of their mining, the owners margin and transport. Forget the stuff about "free transport to site", it is built into the contract price, otherwise the other party would not enter into a contract. It is simple business 101.

A lot of the costs are going to be fixed costs, power, diesel, reagents, transport of finished product, labour etc, so even when the price of cobalt falls, these still cost the same.

We don't know the cost of the ore.
We don't know the fixed costs.
We don't know recoveries of metals (this is why they are now commencing to take bulk samples for metallurgical work) as per ore supply announcement.) BTW taking bulk samples for metallurgical test work is something I've mentioned they needed to do, but many here stated they didn't. Typically to get the best results from metallurgical testing takes months, and in some cases companies spend years on this before designing and building a plant.
We don't know the payables yet, (though from people like G.Heppel for CRU International, is quoting 60% for clean cobalt hydroxide) (not allowed to link for some reason)

We do know that DRC royalties for cobalt are now 10%.
We do know that the price for the final product has fallen by 2/3rds (LME) since the company first took on this idea.

We do know that there are companies pulling back on fast ramp up of production of cobalt in the DRC due to low prices (among other reasons), plus there will be a large increase of cobalt coming out of the DRC over the next couple/few years (Katanga, Mutanda, Chemaf, ERG Metalkol etc).

We don't know if this venture will be viable at current prices because there is just no information about this!! It sounded a very profitable idea when prices were in the $85,000+ range last year!!