Yeah, I think the company could be DSO mining in as little as 18 months, but I am trying to temper my expectations and not ramp the stock with my own bullish perspective.
At the end of the day, the global markets are a bit of a mess and people are calling for a global recession, and the new Malagasy mining code is still being defined.
My question (which I asked before) is "With the simplicity of mining DSO Iron Ore, how complex are the later stage studies going to be?"
I can't imagine there would be too many unknowns or variance in the price of items and costs (inflation aside).
As I understand it, we would traditionally follow this type of process, with my assumed / understood timings.
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Scoping Study - 6 to 9 months - we are under 2 months away
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Pre Feasibility - 6 - 12 months (depending on the complexity), but for us going DSO maybe 3 - 6 months?
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Definitive feasibility study - again with complex processes, it could be 9 - 18 months, but for DSO perhaps another 3 - 6 months? Is it even needed and the PFS and DFS could be combined into one?
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Mining License - I have no idea. In lieu of a mining code, we need to assume the government will work with us in good faith because as you point out, the people, community, government and country need the money from a transparently and well run mining operation. The country has been short changed previously, and I would imagine the government want to get wins on the board. A 5% royalty on $120m is $6m. I could imagine a well meaning government could do a lot with that money, and even more if they support the scaling of the operations.
At 20 Mt, the operation would be doing $2B a year in revenues, and 5% of that is $100m (simplified numbers).-
Find partners - mine operation, transport and logistics etc, I am sure Paul and the local team have been speaking with people, but every conversation will be contingent on
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Off take agreements - Paul has mentioned previously that there are potential customers in UAE / Middle East, India, Japan and of course China. 1.5 Mt ramping up to 3 Mt is nothing for a big steel producer.
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Final investment decision - I can't imagine this being a hurdle if the commercials stack up
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Raise the funds - It'll depend on the wider market conditions, but if there is money to be made, people will invest.
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Build - I don't imagine we would have many long lead items, and I would also imagine most of the equipment we need would be catalogue items.
Longer term, and as we move towards more conventional mining, I can imagine the studies and build for the full scale 20 Mt dry processing operation grinding down to 75 microns would likely take 2.5 to 5 years to complete.
We should have at least 10 years of DSO ore at Bekisopa.
I imagine that once we exhaust the DSO at Bekisopa, we would be able to shift the DSO equipment and operations to Satrokala, and we ramp up the full scale mine.
I would also imagine we would commence the study work on the full scale operation at Bekisopa, and start proving up more ground along the 6km strike through a comprehensive drilling campaign once the company starts making money. Again, as you said previously, this will help unlock value should someone want to acquire the company.
Longer term, I would like to see the company go down the path of more vertical integration and value add by creating a Pellet Plant to process the ore. If Bekisopa is indeed a district as we hope it is, it could go a long way to reducing the shipping costs.
Obviously I have no understanding of what is required to do this, but I DO know this is something that Champion Iron recently announced an investment in
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/ann-acquisition-of-pellet-plant-signing-of-mou-with-steelmaker.6749251/
(20min delay)