All good comments adding to the discussion.
The neighbouring build at Kibali (pictured) was undertaken by Randgold in a 50/50 JV with Anglogold Ashanti. It is an impressive feat all things considered it too faced the infrastructure, vegetation and community challenges (albeit different ones from what I understand). This build cost was in the order of US$2.3 billion (I heard the original budget for essentially the same plant capacity was US$1.6 billion). Randgold took over a Canadian/Australian company called Moto Goldmines who had discovered the huge orebody and derisked it by doing a lot of technical and community work. It is telling that even though Randgold was a multi-billion dollar market cap company, who had strong cashflow from their operating mines in Mali and had access to revolving corporate debt (not project secured), who in theory could have acquired Moto Goldmines 100% and financed and built the project themselves, they still elected to get another significant multi-billion dollar company involved to assist in the effort (financially and while Randgold wouldn't admit it, technically as well).
The point here is that Rangdold had financial strength but still saw the DRC as a high risk jurisdiction and decided to spread that risk by bringing in a significant partner. What is the market cap of VEC - A$20-30M? And they are going to do this all by themselves and capture all the value themselves?
How will these guys finance and execute this build successfully in a manner that delivers appreciation to share price when they are having trouble paying back the con note on time and will be needing oodles more equity funding to keep the company's lights on, do the requisite exploration, do the study work - all that before actually building the mine. It will be a blizzard of additional stock being issued - there just won't be any beta left in the stock. This is assuming they can actually find willing money after recent events.
The photos are great Rooster as they show what can be done with (almost) unlimited money and balance sheet strength. They are good photos of the Kibali site and the VEC site. My point about terrane and vegetation, while still being an issue outside of the immediate area of the mine, was probably most pertinent to the supply routes to site. For the benefit of the discussion, I've included a photo of some actual road building work in the eastern DRC for supply routes into Uganda and Rwanda (for things like diesel, cement, explosives, steel, drill consumables, food, cyanide, mill balls, etc, etc and everything else that is needed to build and operate a mine). Tough and expensive work, and while not needed for the full +1,500km journey to the VEC site, there would be a reasonable amount of this needed. In the months long rainy season, it literally buckets down in the eastern DRC and the roads really take a hammering. Again, how are these guys going to fund it?
I saw that one of the selling points of VEC was that they had a lot of stored gear from the Anglogold Ashanti days. No doubt that some of this will be usable, but this is but a small portion of the gear that goes into building a mine and this would have been stored for more than 10 years in a high rainfall environment which isn't great for electrical gear, among other things. Also, will the equipment be the same spec that is required by the new owners, maybe, maybe not.
I'm still not a believer. In the right hands and with the right deal, the asset would be value accretive to its owners. This isn't the case here (from a fundamentals point of view).
