AKO General Discussion, page-170

Who knows, I think there is the option for the company could start smaller if the business case made sense, and it would obviously mean less money to be raised and less dilution, but it would also mean we would not fully benefit from the economies of scale.

I think the intent will be to get into full scale production as quickly as possible once DSO mining has been established.

2 years of DSO mining to make some money and build the balance sheet.
2 years for the studies for the full scale mine, and
2 years to order / delivery / building of the full scale mine

Of course you want to add some contingency to that. And things will be dictated by demand the the price of Iron Ore.

Paul has expressed multiple times that the desired production will be 2m - 3m tonnes of DSO per year.

I doubt we will start at 2mt production, and will likely ramp up and the mine gets commissioned and the operations are optimised, but the target will likely be 2mt per year.

There is no deposit near the coast, just the 6 identified magnetic anomalies in the "Bekisopa District".

Only one of those anomalies has had drilling, and that is the only defined resource we have at the moment.

The thing about the above numbers for transport is we do not need to pay this up front (not capital expense), the costs will be borne by the transport partner and will be paid for work completed (are operational expense).

Yes, rail will be the best option, but that will be determined by the size of the full resource at Bekisopa. We would likely need 3 billion tonnes of ore for 1 billion tonnes of concentrate (at a 30% yield) across the district to justify the $2B or so it would take to build the rail line.

1Bt of concentrate at 20mt tonnes of concentrate produced per year would mean a 50 year mine life. It would also mean we would need to process 60mt of ore per year.

Of course there is the potential for the company to enter a public / private partnership with the government to help share the costs where the government connects cities across the country and Akora connect to the rail line from the mine site.

Given the links above that claim autonomous electric vehicles could result in the same cost scenario as rail, but without the capex, it could make more sense to build a private road and go down that path.

There are too many variable and unknowns to form any sort of plan now, but there is no harm in speculating.