Stage 2 is to a degree already in place, it was more economical for WAK to include may things in Stage 1 - substantialy all the infrastructure, excluding the plant itself. The funds required should be small. Andrew Sorensen has often commented on this. In the recent Announcement one can read:
• Estimated 12-month build, targeted outstanding funding to be completed via cashflow from operations.
• Very strong demand from customers to accelerate Stage 2 timeline.
• Stage 2 budget $16m, to date $4m has been spent.
That sugests $12m is the CAPEX required. This higher than I expected, but it includes investing in a wet-delamination add-on. That is something that WAK could delay, but: I believe WAK's ore is so suited for delamination; WAK is going about it in a near-unique way; and with obvious enthusiasm. Management knows about kaolin and the profit potential of getting into some known-to-them niche sector (perhaps thin and ultra-thin paper) may be too good to ignore.
Management's enthusiasm occasioned the Doubting Thomas side of my nature to question why. The reason, I think, is the high-perfection-crystals, and the large particle size germane to WAK's ore. One must realise that "coarse" means large crystals - it does not mean coarse in the sense of some imperfection, or hardness in terms of Mohs Scale.
There is a premium-priced niche market for paper-coatings-grade kaolin in the fine-to-ultra-fine paper market, and if any supplier has ore suited to delaminate to a flatness factor (shape factor) of 70 or greater, it is WAK. Ignoring the ramblings of a mineralologist manque, the long held enthusiasm that Management has had to get into the paper-coatings game can be takent to be a proxy for it being a lucrative path for WAK.
PS I think that in 2020 when the idea of options was conceived, Management still thought that Stage 3 should be similar to the high-CAPEX under consideration a decade ago, but the K99 dry-float technology has transpired to be astoundingly efficaceous, andit led to the idea of coming at Stage 3 as a dry-float process, with a wet-delamination step tacked on. The mineralogist manque has added telepathic mind-reading to his list of wannabes.
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