Ann: High grade Niobium results from Equador - Brazil, page-1480

I didn't ask anyone what grades SUM would get, I asked what people were expecting, given all the information known so far.

I first invested in Pilbara back late 2014, based on the Tabba Tabba proposed tantalum mine, which also had Nb2O5 as a byproduct. Pilbara had 50% of the project and was planning a small scale mine to produce a 5% tantalum concentrate. The ore body based on these pegmatites had been mined by artisan miners over the previous century for the tantalite, tin and Columbite, basically a coltan mine.

The pegmatites, of which rich high grade rock chip samples were easily obtained, ended up with a resource of 211,000 tonnes at 0.124% Ta2O5 and 292ppm Nb2O5 (the niobium was just a byproduct without much considered value at the time). World tantalum market at the time was 1300 tonnes/a and has grown to 2,000t/a in 2022. It's a much smaller market than Niobium.

So far no-one has mentioned what type of grades they expect, which of course would flow to what could be mined in terms of plant size and yearly production etc, etc.

Reading a lot of posts here, most people seem to believe there is 'a lot' of both tantalum and niobium, without trying to work out what their exact expectations are in terms of grade to be mined, which is what the drilling will show.

If people don't have any 'expected' idea of grades when the drilling commences, then why are you all holding? Is it just short term hype based on low Mcap?

Posters are correct no-one 'knows' what the drilling grades will be, but surely there is someone with an expectation, as in what type of grades would keep you bullish, what type of grades would make you bearish etc?
What types of grades would push the SP up or down?

In the Pilbara case I mentioned above, the processing equipment fell to pieces as soon as they started mining, so the project was abandoned. Luckily the lithium in the area planned for expansion of tantalum mining , Pilgangoora started to be worthwhile. Pilbara basically gave away the Tabba Tabba area as worthless when the cheap tantalum mining didn't work, and never bothered to search for lithium there, which WC8 now own and have hundreds of millions of tonnes, of lithium pegmatites.

The lesson for me was that rock chip samples can be fantastic grades, but it's the rotary lie detector results that count and if you don't have any expectations of results, how will you know if it's a keeper or a dumper once results come in??