Taking mining costs for Sybella one step further, and benchmarking against two of the best REE clay deposits on the ASX (IXR and AR3), it is clear that Sybella will be
significantly cheaper to mine per unit of contained rare earths than IXR (twice as expensive as RDM), and AR3 (over 5 times more expensive compared with RDM).
Below the breakdown of head grades for each of the three projects, as well as strip ratio and an estimate at the mining cost. See my previous post above on source for mining cost per unit of waste/ore.
It is clear that RDM's superior head grade gives it a huge advantage over IXR and AR3. Just looking at the Boundary Fence East deposit (not considering the higher grade potential Breccia at Donkey Dam), the value weighted MREE grade is 70% higher than IXR and 91% higher than AR3. In combination, the superior strip ratio gives Sybella an extremely low mining cost of only $12 per contained value weighted MREE.
First target from a share price for me is to surpass AR3, which would be a project EV of $17m, or SP around 13.0c. This should be quite easy given Sybella is clearly a superior REE deposit in grade, strip ratio, location (20 km from Mt Isa, could it get much better?), and met testwork. Then the next stop will be IXR..
| REE Grades (ppm) ² | VW MREE | Strip Ratio | Mining Cost |
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| Company | Nd | Pr | Dy | Tb | ppm ¹ | Overburden m | Ore Width
m | Strip Ratio (waste: ore) | AUD/t material | AUD/t feed ore | AUD/kg contained MREE | Project EV ($m) 4 |
| RDM | 263.8 | 75.3 | 29.1 | 4.9 | 420 | 0.0 | 120.0 | 0 | 5.0 | 5.00 | 12 | 5.6 |
| IXR | 150.0 | 42.0 | 18.0 | 3.0 | 246 | - | - | 0.57 | 3.1 | 4.87 | 20 | 126.5 |
| AR3 | 121.0 | 32.0 | 18.0 | 3.2 | 219 | 5.7 | 1.6 | 3.56 ³ | 3.1 | 14.14 | 64 | 16.5 |
| 1 - VW MREE (Value-weighted MREE) =( $74.5 USD/kg x Nd ppm + $73.8 USD/kg x Pr ppm + $375 USD/kg x Dy ppm + $1191 USD/kg x Tb ppm)÷100 |
| 2 - RDM REE grades = average 0-120 m in holes SBRC015-017 (Boundary Fence East) |
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| 3 - AR3 strip ratio calculated from significant intercept depth and width from holes KM0001 to KM0701 in Dovetail deposit |
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| 4 - Project EV =EV (Market cap less Jun Q liquid assets) divided by project ownership %. IXR ownership 60% of Makuutuu. RDM, AR3 100% ownership. |
I have been playing around with the processing/extraction data they have released, but will refrain from sharingon here until they have shared some more data - it is quite early days on that front and a bit more data is needed before jumping to conclusions.
(20min delay)