Good points Cadel.
I went back and checked the original Richie Benaud-esque loan announcement:
Then looking back at the EFA 03/03/2020 announcement and it is clear:
It seems it was an all-in-one package.
This was all pre-Aug 2023 BAM Study.
Previously, our mine and PSG plant were estimated to cost less than what the post-COVID inflation BAM costings spat out for just the stage 1 mine!
Though to be fair we have upsized the project over 3x from 28,000 tpa to 100,000 tpa of PSG.
So since Aug 2023 the EFA have studied our staged approach of the BAM, then had to deal with all the other 'moving feast' announcements:
- licensing agreement for downstream purification process
- updated mineral ore reserve and resource estimates
- LCA
- Siviour land acquisition
- optimised product mix
- electricity infrastructure upgrade commissioning
And finally approved/front-loaded the loan to get the mine started (just not on the 04/04 date
, as it was a week later the PM rolled out AFMIA).
It is IMO not unreasonable to suspect they may also chip in down the track to accelerate the PSG plant, as the downstream part of RNU's vertically integrated project is the real focus of a Future Made in Australia...
