I noticed this comment in the section of "Cut-off Grade" and thought it relevant for some of our own back of the envelope type calculations....
"These parameters should not be regarded as assumptions that are at the confidence level which is associated with any project study. Accordingly, and for the sole purpose of this earlystage assessment, this work assumed a FeNb price of approximately US$30/kg (contained Nb in FeNb payable at price of US$45/kg), metallurgical recovery to concentrate of 53%, mining costs of US$2.50/t, processing costs of US$20/t, and G&A costs of US$3/t. A cut-off grade of 0.25% Nb2O5 presents a reasonable potential of providing the necessary head grade that would result in reasonable prospects of economic extraction. "
So roughly a cost of $US25.50/t of ore mined and processed into a concentrate..
Let's take 100 tonnes as a simple example for 'profitability' or EBITDA, I'll repeat the "roughly" bit...
100t at 2.1% grade = $US2,550 'cost'...
Revenue = 100t X .021% X .53rec X $30k/t = $US33,390
Add revenue from P2O5 ... 100t X .088 X 1rec* X $200/t (for a 30% P2O5 concentrate)
= $US5,866
* recovery given as 100% because the 8.8% P2O5 is for the lower overall resource not the higher grade, so I allowed for a higher grade mined then a loss due to recovery factors to roughly cancel each other.
OK so a return from the phosphate much greater than costs of entire mining and processing operation ($US2,550/100t)
Considering our lower grade detrimental elements in the ore body compared to Araxa, plus the byproduct of phosphate, we should be a much more profitable mine than Araxa when mining our high grade ore.
I suspect CBMM will easily work this out as well and will certainly accept us as a new mine/producer, and will not want a price war, so should allow for us mining at 1.5-2Mt/a and producing somewhere between 17,000t/a and 22,000t/a Niobium concentrate worth close to the $45,000/t of which it should be all profit, as the phosphate revenue covers all costs..
Even at the lower end of 17,000t of Niobium = roughly $US760M or $A1.16B ...
While at the $US30k/t X 17,000t of Niobium =roughly $510M or $772M...
You can't tell me the big boyz haven't worked this out and want our shares.....
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