Im referring to the dollar amount.Your costs outlayed from an...

Im referring to the dollar amount.

Your costs outlayed from an integrated miner/refiner are far lower than independent miner or refiner ie.

scenario 1 - integrated

costs 600 to process the ore
costs 200 to refine
= 2k sale price
profit
1200

vs

scenario 2 - independent

buys the ore at 1200
pays 200 to refine
= 2k sale price
profit
600

regarding mining each miner is very different, some can make massive profit at scale while those with high opex and lower grade will struggle to make margins.

So again, it comes down to who your comparing but to say mining as a generalisation has better margins isnt true. It comes down to who the company is, the ore asset, the part of the economic cycle to which ur assessing them in, amongst other things.

If you picked CXO vs Greenbushes, regardless of the refinery for "value add"
Your still going to have a bad margin miner 1st and a good margin miner second on the basis of opex, scale and grade... as other factors to the above...

So I think we will agree to disagree and leave it at that.