I have doubt's over the 'RIO bought Arcadium for the DLE tech narrative'. I'm sure its an ancillary benefit, however you don't spend US$7B on an asset to help the one worth ~500M (yep, that's what Rincon would be worth today and includes the 300M they have pumped into it so far). Furthermore, didn't they pass FID to Rincon 60ktpa BEFORE Arcadium closed? So then why exactly do they need their DLE tech if they're already committed to proceeding? A bit confusing that one.
Back to Galan. The cost savings for the Liming facility seem relatively straightforward. As
@SentryBox77 covered already, we don't need the reagents which formed a decent chunk of our phase 1 Opex. While they aren't directly itemised here, you can infer from the saving of DFS1 to new model, the reagents cost ~US$700 ($3,963 - $3,263 New model)
It is however on the capex where the massive savings take place as the liming plant cost was heavily front loaded.
- DFS 1 projected the liming plant to cost US$27M for P1 or $5000/per tonne
- DFS 2 projected the liming plant to cost an additional US$31M bringing overall cost down to $2650/per tonne
As this nano plant is modular, it potentially can be built for ONLY 4ktpa. Therefore, (for equivalency purposes) Authium could build this plant for ~US$10.6M
Clearly it could cost more as it's a different tech (or less), however I wouldn't assume their cost of the plant is going to mirror that of the original in our studies.
A couple of other points. Cameron Stanton and the Authium team are backed by Ocean Partners and are incredibly accomplished (and i would assume capitlised) in their own right. These aren't a few guys operating out of the back of their mums garage. As highlighted above, this is not the most capital intensive of projects (for their share) and I don't believe they would be exposing themselves as they have, and committing as they have, if they didn't think it was going to work.
As I raised in an earlier post, my guess is they could be developing and deploying yet another tech that would be bought out by RIO. I personally think this is their play, but even if it's a long term plan for us, it's a win win both ways.
On a final point, every OT partner to date for Galan has been met with undue criticism. When we announced the Glencore deal it was 'these are commodity trading vultures that will screw us'. Next it was Chemphys who were going to 'have us over a barrel' and 'steal our assets'. Now we have an Australian based company, who offer incredible terms, and it's 'you can't deviate from your original plan', 'this is unproven', 'they could have solvency issues' etc.
I get we are all battered and beaten and this point, however I think this is an exceptional result on nearly all levels. As shareholder I'm pretty satisfied and personally looking forward to sitting back, and enjoying the next chapter our story.
(20min delay)