To be fair they did actually get a mining lease granted - albeit...

To be fair they did actually get a mining lease granted - albeit very late form the Greenland Government.

Its a sign of frustration that IBG is exploring other options to get finance outside of the Chinese, in my opinion the Chinese option is doomed to fail and progress is at a glacial pace anyway. In my opinion they are essentially time wasters at the moment. They should have been exploring funding options in Europe/ the USA/ Canada and Korea/Japan the day after the Greenland Government issued the approvals for the mining lease.

IBG should be going straight to the smelters and/or major miners such as Glencore/Trafigura/Boliden/Nyrstar/Teck/Korea Zinc/ Toho Zinc even Hindustan Zinc etc as the smelters in particular are fighting for zinc concentrate supply, time to inject some competative tension in the funding process as the Zinc is there but needs the capital to bring it into production. Any one of those mentioned companies will offer a more politically acceptable partner for the Greenland Government to approve, and will produce a quicker deal, and more importantly a deal that you can rely on, not some vague promise in the never-never.

Fortunately this Zinc up-cycle will probably last longer than the last one due to supply constraints and the lack of exploration and investment but IBG still need to make something happen very very soon.

They can do a poor/average deal and be in production for some of this high price cycle, or they can spend 25+ years waiting for the perfect deal with the Chinese, its their choice.