My thoughts are pretty much aligned to the comments @2ic has...

My thoughts are pretty much aligned to the comments @2ic has made.
All things considered to make fair yard stick comparison to an economical project one needs to compare the facets. Grade and size of resource is one part of the puzzle, but it's the 3-4 other ones that imho don't make the project viable at current REO.

I'll go one further to state even a REO project i hold is marginal/not profitable at current REO price. So if AR3 was to have a higher strip ratio, larger spatial resource, higher acid consumption/lower recoveries the logical answer is even less likely to be profitable.

Just depends on people's investment thesis - but i tend to try (most of the time) to find projects on lower end of cost curve in the development phase. That way - not necessarily banking on commodity prices ripping upwards.

Post #:63775665 from 2ic is actually pretty insightful to understand what was and was not said in the met work. Namely, that if you're not completing met work on composite samples - you're really not getting a full picture of the behaviour of how the REO will recovery across that deposit. Furthermore, when it comes to recoveries of Ionic clays they're actually usually not that great. But the reason they are generally still viable even with 30-40-50% recoveries is because the processing methodology is low cost. (obviously that low cost is relative). It should be noted that recently other companies have deliberately moved away from Ph1 leaching. Noting that the acid consumption was a fair bit lower than AR3's to begin with and recoveries slightly better. The reason for this was to mitigate impurities in the downstream processing. (Despite their being a fairly large step change downwards in overall recoveries.

It seems to validate that processing at PH1 isn't just cost intensive from an acid consumption process - it materially impacts the impurities in the concentrate. This is why typical IAC's in china,myanmar etc vary rarely (seemingly) deviated from PH3.5-4.5 leach conditions. Fortunately for them a large proponent of the deposits REO's were in ionic form. So the leach at room temp and in 30mins makes for a very cost effective methodology to process and additionally significant limits impurities dropping out in the leach.

The price movement has been awesome, and again depending on peoples investment thesis and duration etc there's plenty of ways to make money.

For this to make sense for me personally to invest;
-I would need to see a bulk/composite sample of metallurgical testwork which showed comparative or exceeding recoveries to industry peers.
-It would be important for the acid consumption and impurities to be shown in this test work and be less than peers.
-if those were to be the case maybe it would offset it's strip ratio and have a comparable AISC. (noting others are twice as thick as they are deep or better).

Those 3 points aside it would then still probably be uneconomic at current REO price. Which i've indicated is actually probably the case for 1 project i hold. (at the mine).

*Disclosure i only hold 2 REO project and both are ionic clays and i'm not suggesting these are 'buys' i have a lower average on both.

I've been searching for one in Aus which makes sense, but the consistent trend appears to be that the ionic clays are either not all that ionic (or not ionic at all) and/or have average strip/size (very thin or deep).

SF2TH