At full capacity, ore could be processed at a rate of one million tonnes per annum (tpa) with lithium oxide concentrate production of 137,000 tpa and 56,000 pounds (lbs) per annum of contained tantalum (TA2O5).
This website info needs updating I believe...
I think they were talking about running at night, which would bring capacity to 180k tpa
But let's work with these (older) figures anyway..
I'll say $700USD per tonne is possible here for spodumene concentrate at around 5.8%
700 * 137,000 = $95,900,000 USD
$191 USD a kilo for Tantalum = 25401 kg * 191 USD = $4,851,591
95.9+4.85 = $100.75M - Operational costs / admin (At what I think is a generous 15% figure)
= $85.6374M USD
Convert to AUD (At current exchange rate) = $117,609,573
Divide by two, for GMM / GXY = $58,80M AUD per annum
That is just ONE project. Cattlin, and notwithstanding any processing improvements that are made with mica removal circuit / Tantalum recovery circuits etc.
Then there's James Bay, which for simplicities sake I regard as roughly the same production, then there is SdV on the horizon also.
So when a company with such low expenditures, is producing almost $60M AUD a year, with a mine with a minimum 17 year operational life, Getting finance / JV to build out JB and SdV starts becoming pretty easy to justify.
