LOL mate, you haven't even diluted ADN for the required $190M capex, or split by the 70/30 equity, your cost per tonne for the kaolin route here cannot (at all) be compared to A4N which is a feedstock chemical re-processor, which leaves you with comparisons to FYI (US$6,800/t AISC) or ATC (US$9,800/t AISC). This is before the royalty or JV requirement for the AEM "IP" they are bringing in.
Well, it's funny isn't it, how everyone here mixes up the kaolin price with the HPA price, and can't do the sums?
For a start, the cost of producing HPA is fixed to several things. Firstly, the cost of screening to produce the kaolin, which is the source of alumina heading in to the plant. The kaolin costs A$354/t to produce, from a head grade (in granite) of 18%, with 50% recovery, to produce a kaolin clay product with 37% Al2O3. This is a minimum mining and dry beneficiation cost of $970/t of alumina without the back-end purification costs.
Absolute best case scenario, prior to any validation work, back-end production costs are $5,500/t (equal to FYI's back-end costs) for a total of $6,400/t. However, this does not take into account the critical and heavily energy intensive front-end calcination of the kaolin to meta-kaolin.
So, you have to take your $354/t kaolin production cost, add on an extra $?? in calcination, and then assume a back-end cost of a minimum of $5,500.
This will in all likelihood result in a AISC in the mid to high $7,000's, which is competitive with the other kaolin clay sources of HPA, but not in any way extraordinary.
Now, this is very simplistic, since the kaolin AISC from ADN's PFS includes transport costs of the DSO kaolin (37% or $130/t, equating to $355 per tonne contained HPA) and overseas refining (33% or $310/t). Any Australian HPA plant obviously won't need so much transport of the ore, but will require an entire wet screening and classifying plant, to produce the purified kaolin to go into the kiln.
This, if we base it off SUV's scoping study released yesterday, will approximate ~$68M in capex for the wet screening plant, and will save some significant transport costs. But unless the HPA refinery is located at Poochera (unlikely) the clay will need to be transported to Adelaide, let's say. So do you locate the wet screening plant close to the refinery, and DSO from Poochera to Adelaide, and do the dry and wet screening? This sounds a lot like WAK's plant thus far shipping from Wickepin to Perth; they're replacing that with at least a dry screen on site.
The front end calciner CAPEX is well understood, as is the back-end gas sparging situation and final calciner. Your two price points here are from FYi and ATC (you have to ignore A4N as it doesn't do the front end calcining).
I honestly can't see this announcement as more than a late 2022 result of a new PFS work stream conducted after the 90 day MOU testing regime and a mini-pilot plant from September to June 2022. This will deliver, as said above, a competitive mid-$6K to mid $7K AISC operation, with a US$120-180M capex. ADN's partner is 'seeking finance' to resurrect the Orbite Technologies plant, where the final calciner was kaput, and will require a minimum US$40-80M to repair, redesign or completely replace. I can't see how they are best served by redeploying to Australia and starting again from scratch, if the play is to use ADN's kaolin in Canada. Unless the plan is to move the kit from Cap Chat to Port Pirie or something.
So, anyway, more run of the mill kaolin hoo-hah, with a 12-24 month runway to a new, separate DFS than the DSO kaolin opportunity.
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