Ann: Very High Metallurgical Recoveries, page-247

Yes mate. Any scenario is possible and I am not making claims on what is economic or not. IMO however I do not think HCI is the best way to go but happy to be proven wrong on that by the company down the track if that is the case.

In my opinion, given HCI is many times more expensive IMO I doubt that any acid reduction would bridge that gap. Unless literally x3 times less acid was used, then your hypothetically situation would be very true indeed.

There is so much to break down with REE clay explorers. Acid type and consumption as we have just discussed very important in regards to OPEX. Acid selection does affect CAPEX but if the project is good enough the higher CAPEX should be easily absorbed. Then we have the depth of the clay, energy to dig it and the energy to process it. That forms most of the OPEX in a very simple nutshell.

Then we get to revenue. TREO is a very misleading blanket term. TREO includes everything - High vale or low value elements. All the elements in your clay is called the basket. Every clay project has a different basket. Some clays are mainly full of worthless REE's and other clays comprise of far more valuable REE's .. So, obviously you want your basket to be filled with valuable REE's. A total basket value per KG of what they clay is worth gives a clear indicator the type of REE's we are dealing with. Hopefully OD can come out with that.

Then the next thing to focus in on is how much of each REE you are recovering. Again, it is irrelevant having high value clay if you are not recovering the money REE's. Each REE within the clay will recover at different amounts. You do not get 50% of everything for example. You may get 40% of this and 50% of that. So the important things is to be recovering the valuable REE's.

So, once you know the type of acid being used attached with the acid consumption you can start to hone in on the opex side a little. Once the FULL met results are released we can see how much of each REE is being recovered. Then we can convert that to a dollar figure to hone in on revenue.