Banter and general comments, page-8009

With Spod prices where they are, over-budget but ahead of schedule for the DMS plant could have significant upside. Is it even a possibility?

The original planning had the open pit commencing before the DMS plant (which is why the July 2021 DFS had 507kt of ore mined but only 15.5kt of DMS output in the first period). It also assumed Spod at US$743/t so this timing gap wasn't particularly crutial.

Assuming both DMS and over-burden removal projects are tracking broadly to their originally estimated months to completion timeframes, open-pit ore production is occuring several months before the DMS is fully functional. If the DMS delivery date could be brought forward a month, the DMS plant would still have a full-capacity supply of ore. This would also then allow either (a) production and sale of an additional circa 15kt of spod in 2022 (so A$50m revenue @ US$2,500), or (b) allow more of the potential teething issues to be resolved in 2022 so that a fuller or full year of production is delivered calendar 2023.

If its even possible at this stage, how much extra capex would it cost to speed up the $40m DMS plant delivery date by a month? If its "only 10% or 15%" extra, that would seem a sensible thing to do. Yes its $4 to 6m extra capital cost but $50m extra revenue.