Royalty-based financing works well if the project is forecast to...

Royalty-based financing works well if the project is forecast to be quite profitable. The MRE will need to show a lot more copper to get this over the line for profitability. The cost of setting up a processing plant is just so huge that you really need an almost tier one sized deposit.

I see figures between $800 million to $1.1 billion being used for capex for mines that process 36-40 thousand tonnes of copper per year (Mantoverde deposit, Capstone Copper). We have 327,000 tonnes of copper at 0.8% cut-off, likely more in next MRE, so we staring down a similar capex to produce 36k tonnes for a decade.

That still leaves plenty of room for the costs of mining and processing, and plenty of profit with the forecast increases in copper price.

Hard decisions are about to be made it seems.