Ann: Kasiya Pre-Feasibility Study Results, page-7

Large deposits need large capital to exploit (particularly here in Malawi where everything has to be imported).

Not only the product "s" - the shear size of deposit and the scale is what the RIO's are seeking - large scale mining opportunities of 50-100 years potential mining - regardless where they are - are usually owned - jointly owned by the big miners or are taken over at some point by them - as we have seen with copper recently - gold - lithium plays at present (Albermarle) - oh and of course the Chinese whom will pillage and plunder under any circumstance re Myanmar - Laos - Africa etc.

I firmly remain with belief the SVM director ex RIO - contact to old pals back at RIO - whom then took an early first choice look at SVM's assets - tours around all the tenements and clearly were delighted in what they saw - particularly given the progress with Malawi gov in establishing the new mines and minerals bill and other key governance improvements. What the Malawi gov would do to have RIO operating a LSM in their country - expect some red carpet to be ordered in time for the signing off when RIO take over SVM.
The RIO's do their due dilligence and just add these LSM - operational or early stage with a very long term view. Opposed to an SVM scrambling for offtakes - finance - scrambling for profits to service debt etc on some assumed product demand/pricing forecast - Syrah comes to mind next door in Mozambique.
For mine it is the rutile primarily and the graphite secondary in my view for RIO. Their existing rutile business has a long established and ready made market that RIO already have large customer base -and importantly a very clear understanding of the market metrics/demand/deficits - the graphite would be a quality by product indeed to fatten profits. They could just dump it into markets at lower pricing because - they can.