"Too right ,its much more important that the factory managers are directed to ensure we are producing the right suite of products that align with maximising our Profit rather than nameplate capacity in terms of tonnes. We are not a one product outfit, if we were ,then I would agree ,tonnage output would be very relative."
slasher, you're right to a certain extent, but LYC is a one raw material outfit. If you want to produce nameplate Nd, for example, you have to feed enough concentrate into the kilns to produce everything at the 11,000tpa rate. And before you can produce the Nd, everything has to go through the cracking and leaching units. The next unit, the separation - that depends upon the order of separation, and whether you can pluck the Nd out of solution, or whether you have to, for example, take out the Ce or the La first. I don't know. But you do have to incur the raw material, chemical and energy costs for the first two units for the whole suite. And by that time, I'd be surprised if it wasn't worth the marginal cost to extract the La, which doesn't need be a high purity product for many applications. Which would just leave the Ce as the low value not-worth-separating element.
Really, any maximising production without regard to profit would have minimal impact on profit in terms of producing a premium mix. The problem is that they haven't been able to maximise production. Therefore I think firefly is correct with the obfuscation comment. The phrases attributed to her don't stack up in terms of how the LAMP operates as a complete unit.
LYC Price at posting:
13.0¢ Sentiment: Sell Disclosure: Not Held
(20min delay)