The reason for high capex and high opex is because its mostly produce Eudialytes not the common Monazite.
Unlike Monazite, where a market already exists (or you could further process them like LYC does), Eudialytes is costly to refine.
In fact it's never been done in large scale in the world ever.
If they put Eudialytes in DFS no one will look at it, hence the $1.7b attempt to turn it to oxide. the revenue is actually oxide prices that they cheesed in.
Koreans aren't known for their mining expertise. But now they are slowly moving away and put more money in the plant which they could salvage (at least for my knowledge).
The mine is a dud, it's never good enough for a Zircon nor a REE mine.
In short, from mine to metal nothing is proven. Peak resource has a far more superior mine in Africa and refinery in UK, they last close at 76m market cap. ASM polly looking at the same range, so 70 - 90 cents after inevitable dilution.
These are the good ones
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