You are starting to put the dots together! The issue with TMTs...

You are starting to put the dots together!

The issue with TMTs early stage titanium credit product is its already inferior to the lowest grade feedstock, Chinese ilmenite with ~ 45% content. I could be a dick like someone else and harp on about grade but I won’t. Although it still produces pigment, it inferior to European and Us pigments and therefore limited uses. China only account for 9%. That’s why I say you have a very small market for offtakers so you’d want to optimise that feedstock as it’s already at a significant discount to base grade ilmenite….optimisation costs money.

What you are kind of missing with your comment about what the cost of producing a highly quality feedstock from TIVAN and the additional processing cost to turn to pigment. It’s irrelevant as TNG is integrated so the TIVAN feedstock to pigment is simply a process on the flow sheet. The cost that matters, as I’ve been making regarding marginal producers, is the cost of the product you’re selling. In TNG’s case, the cost of production of pigment is about USD1,350/t versus a current spot of USD4,000/t (Europe) which is often included in presentations and 1/4ly. A 37 year LOM take or pay offtake with Switzerland listed DKSH exists for the pigment – LOM revenue of $19B. Perhaps if you were selling some TIVAN feedstock to another pigment producer and then processing the remainder of the feedstock to pigment to sell yourself, would you need or want a breakdown of TIVAN feedstock costs per tonne and Pigment cost per tonne.

What Rookie loves to point out is the pigment plant costs $222m more (not $500m as he suggests) to fit to TIVAN to produce that pigment. Pigment is a complex process with 37 stages. There are only a small number of pigment producers globally in a 3mtpa market – Chemours (36%), Tronox (35%), Kronos (15%), Venator (7%) Lemon Billions (5%). What Rookie fails to understand, is it is very common in mining for various specialised items to sit off balance sheet that are funded by a strategic or operator to secure that supply. More importantly, they are operated by the specialist but naturally come with an operational cost to the company. So less capex as the third party funds but more opex as the company is paying that specialist to operate the function. Mining service companies exist for a reason!

Ultimately, after running the resources through beneficiation to bring its poor head grade to a concentrate with grades on par, TIVAN is a 2mtpa run rate at a total opex of $210/t of concentrate (including about $63m a year in operational costs for specialist function that sit off balance sheet) resulting in three high purity products 100ktpa of pigment, 6ktpa of V and 500ktpa of Fe65%.

For every 1 tonne of titanomagnetite concentrate run through TIVAN, there is only 165kg of waste. For a Pyro process of extracting V only, there is 993kg of waste product with most of that the iron content. ESG and revenue diversification!

And just as a quick pitch for the V component, it would have a $2.50/lb cost of production.

Hopefully some education of the titanium market and why this constant comparison by some regarding the V is like comparing a supermodel to a grandma.

A couple of charts you guys might find interesting for you Titanium research