I haven't seen the material in question myself so like I said I was making some guesses. The particle size is likely going to be <2mm but the metallic crystalline structures that form (and their contents) are going to vary from place to place.
They could opt to forego a grind to separate the crystals and instead more simply separate the "calcium/silicate/iron/titanium/vanadium" blobs from the the rest of the typical sand and then rely upon the processor do everything for them. A grind and rough separate is possible on a ship, after all you have unlimited water but there will be downsides to it compared to an industrial centre which can do more fancy chemical processing. But then we get into the issues
@WoodySpoon alluded to in which case the vanadium and possibly titanium are just given away because the processor doesn't care about it. Is it better to keep your partially refined titanium/vanadium/iron ore somewhere in case your current refiner doesn't want the Titanium or Vanadium? Or just forget about it initially to later resolve the issue?
The actual method they go with probably won't be known until the BFS, either way I am sure they are going to try to find a way to extract the most value from their ore. Even if you only consider the iron the financials of the project are very good. Without that legal issue TTR had Eggers would have already 40-50x his investment.
In regards to their silver mining at Wonawinta it is going to take some cash to resume mining,
@Gratton44 could maybe better speculate than me on the amount needed to resume mining, which means if they go that route a CR or loan will likely be needed unless the tail end of their silver mining was much much better than they think (which is slightly possible given what I have spoken about before). Again here we are at a critical point for MKR and silver is taking another dump in price right around when they could be looking to sell.
We won't know for sure until the next quarterly, but if their recoveries are not over 100% (which may not make sense without context) for the quarter its going to be rather sour. Even if they are they are over that they will still likely need more cash to resume mining at Wonawinta. Mt Boppy is the cheaper option which is why that has been thrown out, but its a grey area.
It may be better to use some of that cash that is leftover this quarter to drill a few potential hotspots around these other miners in the area and then sell those more speculative stuff to them. MKR have a lot of good land but their cash is going out the window like it is married to a gold digger. Pun? Either way it seems like the only thing they can do besides a CR (which would be horrendous and see Karp thrown out IMO) or a loan (if it's Eggers at 0% and some options maybe not so bad). Given how Eggers is positioning himself within this company right now it seems something "odd" may be thrown around in the near future for MKR.
