Not really. Common practice for large and multi layer projects.
BOOT is agenuine opportunity for a strategic investor to assist the funding stack. You find most strategics will assist with pre-production financing in order to secured their product they’ve got the offtake for. For example TNG’s pigment offtaker, DKSH, has a special investments arm that potentially have capacity to fund the $222m pigment plant. Furthermore, there’s $95m BOOT for a Chlor-Alkali Plant that produces the reagents for the TIVAN process. Given Mt Peake is close access to rail infrastructure, not the middle of nowhere as you so eloquently put it, they could just train the reagents down. ARU in their 2019 DFS suggest this exact strategy and then build your own plant when cash flow positive. Camps, power stations ect, they are all very common to sit off balance sheet but yes, in the absence of achieving outcomes off balance sheet they are funding requirements. On the projects economics, what is key formine is how much savings we’ve achieve in a normalized environment byintegrating the site. Does $824m pre BOOT become $600m? Burton has indicated he expects these savings to be significantly in TNGs favour. your neck is on the line PB!I will say costescalation is across the board at the moment and fact of the matter is EPCsimply cannot accurately price something that will built in 24 monthstimes. If we look at steel products alone…..40% year on year price escalation. This makes the ability to move to FID for TNG, TMT or AVL or anyone else extremely difficult at the moment. I await the TNG/Clough announcement on this very matter.
If the integratedsite saves $200m, TNG CAPEX (including BOOT) with a 40% price escalation is $1.6B. Strike out your genuine BOOT arrangements and you are back closer to $1.2B….still a fundable project with a more diversified revenue stream that TMT, AVL or any other pure V play.
Let's entertain you though, if I strip out the $62m in BOOT opex and increase my capex to $1.5B, keeping all pricing assumptions the same, it's still a $2B NPV8 project. If I escalate my long term titanium pricing to spot, its a $3B project. Chinese don't control the pigment market.
I won't sit hear and point out every single flaw in the TMT project however, since I've got your attention, TMT had aterrible project with all of 15 year LOM, high OPEX and a 450m capex spend(call that $650m with 40% price escalation). It couldn’t get funding or economics to stack up so they’ve gone back to the drawing board for a two resource combined project. They don’t even has a feasibility yet and you are throwing shit that is about to land in your own face. OPEX of $4/lb…….marginal producer at best in an opaque market that the Chinese can turn on and off the tap depending on what the price of Fe is doing.
You say grade is king - V isn't iron, coal, copper or gold….I would suggest cost of production is king in an opaque market controlled by the Chinese. TNG will be an integrated pigment business that just so happens to produce a 99.8% v2O5 product that has the lowest cost of production and best ESG credentials globally.
IMO TMT won't get up and expect a capex closer to AVL’s for its combined project at $1B. I’d back AVL over TMT at this stage of the game if I had to go a pure play V....with some apparent by products.
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