The rare earths space is not well understood by me and judging by many of the posts here by most others as well so I gave Claudio a call today to walk me through some of the detail in an effort to try and educate myself. Thought I’d share it here for those that are interested. Here are some of the clarification points:
. whilst natural to compare to other rare earth co’s the key is in the metallurgy. Many other significant discoveries are problematic due to the high radiation levels or other non-ideal elements(thorium for example) making them look good as a paper discovery but may never be commercially viable. We have NO indication of these issues after significant pXRF testing and assaying thus far.
. our discovery to date is all shallow oxide verses many of the other rare earth co’s who have traditional hard rock. The mining/extraction is vastly easier and less expensive with oxide and the shallow nature further adds to the prospective commerciality. That’s not to say we don’t have further to find at depth in bedrock but we just haven’t drilled that deep as yet even though the find is open.
. to use the gold analogy that everyone understands “Grade is King” the most effective way to determine the value/viability of rare earths is to use the heavy to lights ratio HREE to TREE or HREO to TREO ratio. This is significant for our find and certainly a far better ratio than many/most of the discoveries out there. He could not stress enough the significance of the discovery evidencing the 5 heavy elements and this ratio to me. For example Lynas has an inferior ratio in this measure.
. Oncewe know whole interval intercept data we will be able to calculate a price perKG “basket price” which then enables comparison between REE peers.
***** pricing of our 5 critical REE’s:
https://www.*****.com/strategic-metals/
. the timeframe to prove up a potential resource is far shorter than most would be anticipating. With easy to drill shallow oxide ground we are currently completing over 20 AV holes per day. A couple of comments on this thread have mentioned a couple of years of work to prove up but this should be far, far shorter. It is not comparable to proving up a gold resource for example.
. an application for state government funding under the EIS scheme is being lodged which helps with non-dilutionary exploration costs. The fed funding assistance is increasing significantly for rare earths so this will be investigated further also.
. a webinar is being considered to help update/educate holders in the near future as the sector is very, very misunderstood.
Hope that helps those who have a genuine interest.
mike
(20min delay)