Everyone’s rightly hyped about the manganese — but the limestone is the real near-term play, and it’s strategic.
The REM deal gives ESR a defined market for limestone. If they can prove up the resource, even to an Inferred level, they’re no longer just a high-potential explorer, they’re sitting on a bankable, future revenue-generating asset.
This isn’t theory anymore — it’s execution.
If this were a manganese only story, everything sitting above the orebody is just overburden.
But now? That overburden is potentially worth billions.
Limestone now becomes the de-risker, operationally and financially. It justifies infrastructure. It funds early stages. And critically, it opens up surface-level access to the manganese underneath.
And here’s the bit people are missing:
Twin-resource model = better funding terms.
Lenders and investors don’t just see a one-commodity, long-lead-time project. They see:
* Early cash flow via limestone
* Defined offtake triggers through REM
* Pathway to higher-value manganese
* Reduced dilution risk
* Infrastructure already underway
That’s a different financing conversation entirely.
Even if limestone averages $25–30/t, 500Mt is still $12.5B–15B in material. That’s real leverage. And once the limestone’s removed, the manganese will be exposed at surface, ready to go, already de-risked.
Let the others chase core photos. I’m watching the asset being built — one layer at a time.
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