I think the DFS delay will be solely to allow something to be included for concrete. We'll know more about that in coming weeks.
While I expect an announcement before Christmas on HPA ( this seems to be the consensus in various forums) my guess is it is still too early in the development cycle to be included in the DFS. Maybe it has a 2-3yr timeframe to commercial production.
Another thing is whether James can put the squeeze on one major porcelain manufacturer to pay a premium in line with inks & coatings and concrete i.e. a price ~$1kt. I don't think we've been given a definitive pricing on concrete but we know production costs will be lower than for the porcelain industry as shown in various slide decks so margins will be higher, perhaps much higher.
Regarding porcelain, I imagine there could be quite a competitive advantage if one porcelain manufacturer was able to differentiate its product using 'world's finest' halloysite/kaolin. James says he has interest for >1mtpa. What if he guarantees one customer 100ktpa? This is all speculation but this is how markets work.
Perhaps some of the people who met with James at Noosa this week may have some insight into these things.
The GICAN 'semi-commercial' plant is producing fullerene pellets at the rate of 10's or 100's of kilograms per week, not tonnes of the stuff.
I have no idea how pricing works.
Clearly the market is pricing in some of these developments. The project is now worth somewhere in the order of $700m (it depends what value you want to ascribe to Mt Hope) but what does future cashflow look like? To some extent it's like the cliches: "How long is a piece of string" or "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
Retail investors lack the information to make 10 year forecasts but, as a professional,
@wombat777 can. He is conservative but you can use his model to adjust for your own bullish forecasts.
I am confident that at least 50% of initial output is going to concrete. Strip out some of the costs itemised in the PFS and use a price of say $2kt and the numbers are fantastic!
I wouldn't be surprised if, pretty quickly, a second project is planned for Mt Hope to produce product for inks & coatings and HPA given its special high purity kaolin characteristics. Given everything that the team is learning at GW (and what the govt. authorities are learning too) you can imagine a much quicker timeline to producton. Assume 1 year after GW, that is 2023.
Regarding halloysite nanotube technology I wonder if we need to wait until Camel Lake for the full commercial possibilities to be realised. I say this because the Professor at GICAN specifically name-checked Camel Lake halloysite. At the risk of repeating myself James Marsh has called Camel Lake the 'holy grail of halloysite'. What that means exactly in terms of quality, technical capacities etc only he knows but it is SPECIAL! In the meantime we know that there is sufficient high grade halloysite at GW to produce enough high purity halloysite to supply GICAN.
Let's say that is 5 years away. That is well within the timeframe that the professionals/fund managers are looking at. So, how big could this be?
I don't know but I'm willing to bet it is multiples higher than the current ~$700m valuation.
2022 - GW in production
2023 - Mt Hope in production
2024 - 2nd GW plant in production
2025 - 2nd Mt Hope plant in production.
2026 - Camel Lake in production.
This is what dreams are made of.
It's been uplifting to read anecdotes of young people, kids and grandkids benefitting from the run is the SP. Dreams have been realised already.
But what if we are still in the early stages of a long sustained bull market in "All Things Halloysite"?
(20min delay)