Hi All,Now that NTU has given a JORC estimate it might be...

Hi All,

Now that NTU has given a JORC estimate it might be interesting to do a bit of a comparison.

NTU's JORC resource at Wolverine is 1.4 million tonnes @ 0.73% giving 10,500 tonnes TREO.

CUX's JORC resource at Charlie Creek is 805 million tonnes @ 0.03% giving 135,000 tonnes.

CUX's TREO resource is about 12 times larger but the grade is about 25 times less.

Heavy Rare Earths

CUX: 24.11%
NTU: 84%

Lets's also look at the values for Dyprosium and Yittrium.

Firstly, we need to compare apples with apples.

Dyprosium
NTU: 640ppm or (640/10,000) = 0.064% of total ore
= 8.8% of TREO
CUX
= 2.1% of TREO

Yittrium
NTU:
=57%
CUX:
= 13%

Both about 4 times greater in NTU than in CUX

But now lets look at costs.

Both resources are in Xenotime and Monazite.

The concentrates are:

NTU: 30%
CUX: 40% maybe 50%

The final physical concentration for both ores is electrostatic and magnetic processing. The concentrate produced from the CUX resource i.e 25% to 66% greater. This would seem reasonable as the Xenotime and Monazite are locked in the rock structure of NTU's resource where it has been liberated in CUX's alluvial resource.

The point being the expensive seperation costs of the individual rare earth elements will be 25% to 66% cheaper with CUX resource.

But let's ignore that for the moment and look at the physical costs:

Lets assume that the wet processing of CUX can produce a grade of half way between the 2-12 % of 7% by wet processing.

That will cost CUX @$4/tonne of alluvium being 234 tonnes which equals $936.

If the dry processing is assumed at $23/tonne that will cost another $131 to upgrade the concentrate to 40% taking the costs to $1067/tonne of concentrate.

If you want to add 30% to that figure for recovery that becomes let's say $1400/ tonne.

Let's examine NTU's costs.

They will need 41 tonnes of ore to get a 30% concentrate.

They will need to crush that 41 tonnes of ore at lets say $70/tonne.
That's a total of $2,870.

They will then need to dry process the crushed 41 tonnes of ore at $23/tonne.
That's another $950

That's a total $3820 for a 30% concentrate.

Comparing apples with apples for an equivilent of a 40% concentrate $4,775.

Let's also add 30% for the recovery rate the cost is then $6,200.

Of course this doesn't include the mining costs of NTU.

Yes, NTU's %'s of Dyprosium and Yittrium may have 4 times greater grade in their ore but it would appear that their costs to mine will be well over 4 times greater.

There is also the advantage that CUX has no questions over the size of the resource as only 5% of Charlie Creeks resource was included in the JORC.

These figures are only estimates and the scooping study for Charlie Creek, due early next year, will show if I am in the ball park. I am certainly looking forward to the scooping study as I believe it will prove the low cost of extracting TREO's from Charlie Creek.

DYOR

Cheers