The standout feature of the Wonarah project is the very low capex requirment compared to other bulk commodity projects in Australia, and relatively high opex in light of historical phosphate prices, but not high compared to current prices.
The reason for the low capex is they do not need a rail line, the plan is obviously to truck the ore to tenent creek. Considering they will only move 2-3mt per annum this is very do-able and quite like Midwest or TTY which export similar tonnages of iron ore by truck. Phosphate is of course much more valuable than iron ore.
On the opex side, why does it need $100 per tonne. I guess there is a fair bit of earthworks invoved in stripping the phospate ore from the surrounding rock. Can anyone explain this? Considering $100 per tonne opex, we can see why it wasn't economic previously. If you believe current prices of phosphate are sustainable or could go even higher, I would argue this is the single best undeveloped resource project in Australia today. There is simply no other asset that could generate these returns with such a small outlay.
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