Sorry to jump the gun
@thecrabpest, but I have some thoughts on this topic.
As a side note, it was sand crab lasagne for dinner tonight and holy cow it was good, followed by a crabpest post, renowned for their thoroughness and authenticity. So it’s crab night tonight.
While Hawsons makes a high grade product, the iron in the ground is actually pretty low grade at around 16% DTR, less than half AKO. That means that AKO has to mine and process less than half of the ore tonnes to make the same amount of product. This is a massive advantage for AKO mostly because it means lower capital cost of getting started.
But that massive advantage to AKO pales into insignificance compared to the other AKO advantages. AKO has some DSO ore which will pay for the capital when the time comes to switch to upgrading the ore. This means much less dilution for shareholders. Hawsons is very capital intensive which is why it has token so long to get momentum. AKO will be much less capital intensive.
Part of the capital intensity of Hawsons is that they are 1000km from the coast. AKO don’t have this problem either although the road route is not a walk in the park, it’s heaps better than going 1000km.
(20min delay)