Large deposits need large capital to exploit (particularly here...

Large deposits need large capital to exploit (particularly here in Malawi where everything has to be imported).

Not only the product "s" - the shear size of deposit and the scale is what the RIO's are seeking - large scale mining opportunities of 50-100 years potential mining - regardless where they are - are usually owned - jointly owned by the big miners or are taken over at some point by them - as we have seen with copper recently - gold - lithium plays at present (Albermarle) - oh and of course the Chinese whom will pillage and plunder under any circumstance re Myanmar - Laos - Africa etc.

I firmly remain with belief the SVM director ex RIO - contact to old pals back at RIO - whom then took an early first choice look at SVM's assets - tours around all the tenements and clearly were delighted in what they saw - particularly given the progress with Malawi gov in establishing the new mines and minerals bill and other key governance improvements. What the Malawi gov would do to have RIO operating a LSM in their country - expect some red carpet to be ordered in time for the signing off when RIO take over SVM.
The RIO's do their due dilligence and just add these LSM - operational or early stage with a very long term view. Opposed to an SVM scrambling for offtakes - finance - scrambling for profits to service debt etc on some assumed product demand/pricing forecast - Syrah comes to mind next door in Mozambique.
For mine it is the rutile primarily and the graphite secondary in my view for RIO. Their existing rutile business has a long established and ready made market that RIO already have large customer base -and importantly a very clear understanding of the market metrics/demand/deficits - the graphite would be a quality by product indeed to fatten profits. They could just dump it into markets at lower pricing because - they can.