Appreciate all of the information you've been able to glean in absence of any company communication. Are you a metallurgist yourself by any chance?
I am also thinking a CAPEX assumption in the order of $500m with a full processing route to PGM products (compared to flotation to concentrate only). For comparison DEG at 400 koz/a is around $1B and that includes flotation, POX and cyanide leaching so scaling from that to say a 200 koz/a gold equivalent run rate for POD would be ball park figures around $500m in current environment.
The question for me is on the OPEX side, what are the costs for acid in particular and any other chemicals needed? Hopefully the team shed some light on this in the coming months so we can better estimate the value proposition before the scoping study lets the cat out of the bag.
The most up to date cleaner test result we have seen has best case concentrate achieving 58 g/t 3E and 5% Cu (at a likely poor recovery), against a typical 100 g/t 4E lower threshold for PGM smelters. This signals to me that a hydromet flowsheet is warranted for the Parks Reef sulphide ore (as well as the oxide) so all this talk of just make a concentrate and send it are a bit hopeful. They would not be looking at leaching for over 3 years now if floating it was so simple.
