On the issue of progress to construction / finance, if the construction of Mt Peake Mine is significantly ahead of Darwin Refinery construction they could proceed separately and not under the same finance package. PB has said in the EIS draft submissoon that while The Refinery is dependant on the Mine the Mine is not dependant on the Refinery.
When commodity prices were bottoming out in 2015 and project finance was unavailable PB proposed a two stage Mine Development supported by a Magnetite off take with China's Sinometal
. Uv
nder the MOU Sinometal were to provide $5 mill up front and in return recieve 500,000 to 1mill tonne/pa of cocentrated magnetite for an estimated 5 years.
An analyst report considered that scenario. They concluded that TNG could run a simple Magnetite Mine with concentrator economically and if applying 50% profits to loan repayment could clear debt in 5 years. They had two concerns, resource depletion and the concentrated magnetite purity. It was not clear whether Sinometal would take magnetite with Vanadium and Titanium inclusions. Based on then commodity prices of US$ 5.00/lb for V2O5 and US $6.00/kg for titanium dioxide and US$60/tonne for iron TNG would only receive about 1/3 of the value from concentrated magnetite sales as distinct from selling Refined products. I guess with current prices the difference would be even greater now. But the point is it can be done. Another alternative could be stockpiling the magnetite.
Anyway if (a big if) ECA was sufficiently confident with SMSs product and construction guarantees they may well run with a two tranche proposal with other contributors focused on Mine Construction and their part for Refinery construction. Their actual risk exposure w
ould be nil as any loss would be underwritten by SMSs guarantees and insurers. The guarantees also include timing of construction modules therefor delay is even covered. Iv cut and pasted bits from the updated DFS as well as the recent TNG/SMS EPC proposal to highlight just how extensive the SMS obligations are.
the CAPEX for construction should also be significantly reduced with the TIVAN titanium development announced Feb 2018 removing one full processing stage to get TiO2 to pigment grade for the pigment plant.
Again my thinking is this project is seeking an add of currently known projections.
