Ann: Mount Peake mine development aquifer drilling commences-TNG.AX, page-111

My underwear is brown when I think how this project gets off the ground with current titanium prices and no titanium offtakes.

Has anyone crunched the numbers last year’s DFS numbers a year on?

Pigment titanium is a killer for me on financing. Forecast price used in the DFS $3,573 per tonne is currently at $2,500. That’s a $200m revenue hit to each of years 1 to 4 in AUD.

All else remaining equal, V2O5 @ 6.28/lb, pig iron at $388/t and AUD at 0.75, we can pay back the refinery in years 1-4 but there is about $20m of free cash flow to ‘self-fund’ the $792m 6MTpa expansion. Could be running at 3MTpa for a few more years than 1-4 if it’s to get up.

In a positive, there is the offsetting nature of the Woojin technology agreement to produce ferro-vanadium, currently trading at about $19,000/t as opposed to V205 of $13,841/t used in the DFS which would result in a revenue increase for that product of $100m AUD, under the assumption all vanadium is ferro-vanadium. Unfortunately there are no details of what capital cost will be incurred for that Woojin processing to be incorporated into the TIVAN refinery.

An AUD at 0.65 is a saviour.

Potentially it could have been expected that the AUD was going to be at that level by now to offset the TiO2 depressed pricing hence we are either waiting around for the AUD to drop or TiO2 prices to substantially increase.

I’m sure it’s more complicated than that.