@RPaulson The Brine operations in South America are transported...

@RPaulson

The Brine operations in South America are transported / shipped as well without a lot of the incumbent infrastructure that Australia has....

The Hard Rock players in Australia are extremely fortunate that the Iron Ore industry collapsed and heaps of spare capacity and quality infrastructure exists to get product to market.

The actual transportation costs are likely to be 10% of production costs so pretty irrelevant. I would be interested to know what % additional cost they are for Brines as I do not have this number? Also have been to these countries (mostly skiing ) and visiting copper projects the infrastructure is terrible and dangerous....

A big key difference is environmental. For two reasons. 1. Brine is using up drinkable water and water used for agriculture (negative on the environment) and 2. It is as risk to weather as @ozblue pointed out with both too much / too little rain that can affect an entire years production.

Hard Rock has a much lower risk - maybe 2 weeks impact from a flood.

Cheers,
Super Ninja