The Altilium group who own the DNi patent have already signed up with major Indonesia company Sebuku Group, one of Indonesia's largest mining groups, to build multiple DNi plants throughout Indonesia.
You will notice from the article that it says construction of the first DNi plant by QPM in Australia is expected to commence in April 2022, which certainly isn't happening, unfortunately. The article is from November 2021.
The one critical thing that QPM really need to do is build and operate a plant before the Indonesians start to building 3 or 5 or 7 of them together in quick time, which they will.
One of the issues has always been that QPM do not own the patent, and as such, Altilium can strike up these deals with anyone else in the world, and especially with anyone that is cashed up in a cheap Asian or South American materials and labour market.
There may be a real time line urgency here now for QPM.
Questions also surround how much an Indonesian plant can be built for, and operated at, compared to one in Australia. My understanding is that Sebuku Group will not require any financing, they have the revenue to fund a plant build, in fact, to plant multiple plant builds at the same time, whenever they wish.
The problem with Australia is the exorbitantly high cost of building production plants, and then the high wages costs of running them, which is only going to get much worse this year with rapidly rising inflation. In fact, another gold stock I'm invested in has just postponed building their new plant because of the recent hugely inflated price increases of building materials, delivery and logistics delays, and wage increases to keep the thing running.
How are QPM going to get hold of over $1 billion dollars, compared to a cheap Indonesian build, because the Indo's could probably build 3 plants for that money, and in half the time Australia could, because they don't have the same regulatory regime.
There are some interesting questions to be pondered here, given the rising rates of inflation.
For now, I'm happy to hold here and see what unfolds during 2022 with QPM, either way, it promises to be an interesting journey.
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