Low head grade is definitely a problem - it always must be for any mining operation although, as the grade curves shift, low grade may find a place in the sun. Here they have to move 100 grains of sand to get 1-2 Heavy mineral grains. That could be a recipe for inefficient high cost mining and also probably why David Harley found it hard to get financed last time around.
In Coburn's favour is that the quality of the HMS is high grade and should attract a premium price. That pays for some extra work to start with. In addition, it's always been slated to be a fairly straight forward dry operation so whilst the previously proposed plant was reasonably costly, the cost of production was expected to be relatively low - around the 1st quartile.
Luke Graham is on record as stating improvements in extractive technology since the first DFS so you'd hope that's improved the economic feasibility - get right into the first quartile and it could get legs. We'll know for sure once they've updated the Feasibility Study. For now I'm not getting excited about it, 10 years of nothing could easily be another 10 years of nothing if sands pricing inverts.
STA Price at posting:
17.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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