Yes, the DFS is required for the JV, but the JV doesnt explain...

Yes, the DFS is required for the JV, but the JV doesnt explain the change in scope inside the DFS. That was due to customer(s). Its scary if you think about it. The DFS is required for the JV, the JV is probably required for commitment by a customer and the customer requirements need to be factored in the DFS. Talga needed to do a leap of faith to solve this knot. And thats what we see in the DFS. Obviously in my opinion only.

I agree there are multiple customers, its written in the DFS and makes sense from a business perspective. But I think the changes to the processing are primarily driven by one customer, leading the pack. When you look at the scale of Vittangi vs. the size of Gigafactories, there is not much room to supply two factories unless they are medium to small. But if you have medium to small customers, they probably cant get the weight behind changing the manufacturing process because they very likely require slightly different products. I would speculate that a second and more customers would have to wait for the Niska expansion.

Scaling up the Niska expansion would be wonderful. If I remember correctly, drilling should start this month and finish in Autumn. The Niska mining permit was also supposed to be submitted later this year, so probably will hold onto that until the drilling and data assessment is done. I dont know how much sense a combined DFS with Niska makes. Niska is already 4x Vittangi. If it now gets an other 5x due to higher resource availability, Niska would dwarf Vittangi 20 to 1.