I don't quite agree. You take water from a borefield not from a grid, and you dont have to pay for the water out of the borefield, problem with water is finding enough. Power/fuel costs are far more, on average you need to process 3 tonnes mag ore to produce 1 ton beneficiated ore, so on stripping ration 1:1 you need to mine 6 tons. The big killer on iron is transport, there would be a minimum $30 differential between rail and road, thats why these orebodies become viable - RAIL. Quite simply SMC cannot work out real figures until they know cost of transport, if they could they would have known months ago. SMC have plenty of time to complete necessary mine planning etc before the proposed rail is in place They would be sitting around waiting for it to arrive, they could of course label this "putting it on hold" for some leverage. But I agree its a long term thing.
MMX Price at posting:
76.5¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
