It also makes it tough not knowing what is in store for us as the merged entity... They have not set any sort of clear direction yet... So many other mergers you just know exactly how it works. Bigger company funding the capex of the taken over company, or smaller company's ore simply added to the reserve of the bigger company.
Here, you knew what direction you were going if you held TMT, and the same for AVL, but considering how different the directions, there isn't an obvious 'here is what we'll be doing after we merge'.
We know "integration" post merger, but that's a bit like saying wait 12 Months and then find out what our plan is..
I still think the best way forward and what they will decide is to milk yarrabubba for all it's worth early (TMT still need to update their reserve for down there, and AVL drilled it but no reserve announced yet). Hopefully this could come out to 7 or maybe 8 or more good years of saleable Titanium byproduct straight to the steel industry on top of vanadium, (I also think this is an easier BOA to lock up early, as soon as they have their reserve and confident TMT's kiln can recover what they tested in the pilot).
That will help a lot with early payback and hopefully no additional capex in modifications to TMT's plant.
Then I guess what they may consider is either eeking out every drop from AVL's patented oxidised ore processing, or stick with proven flowsheet and just develop a mine plan that takes what TMT have for the good ore, and add to it whatever of AVL's qualifies and doesn't need special processing.
We already know that is 25+ years for TMT alone, so realistically you can imagine 30 years easy, and that will be the best the project economics can get..
After that, who knows what the V price or market will be, what other technologies or flow sheets have been developed to deal with oxidized ore, but fine go ahead and modify the whole plant to do another 40 years of oxidised stuff..
I just don't think they need to, for the sake of having a 70+ year mine life, need to even deal with the heavily oxides stuff for now..
I'm no geologist and certainly not an expert on AVL or even TMT's full ore reserves and it's specific make up in the ground etc, but from following both companies I know which plan as they stand now that I find more attractive, so I personally hope they just try to maximize that..
That could make for a good project honestly. Graham shouldn't be too married or sentimental for Vince's work, so if most of that plan needs re-thinking or scrapping, I hope they just do it and don't faff around too much for the next 12 to 24 Months and make it more complicated than it needs to be.
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