This is from the original BFS raise announcement 06/07/21
The BFS expansion to include 20Mtpa was announced on 21/02/22 and the exclusive focus on 20Mtpa was announced on 16/06/22.
My query would be how much has been spent pursuing the 20Mtpa option? Much of that spend with regard to the planning and engineering for a 20Mtpa mine size, 400km slurry pipeline and Myponie point port option will be redundant? To some extent it can be "preserved" but it tends to become stale in terms of a BFS after about 12 months or so.
The $10m payout to Starlight and the the $2m cash payment to LDA will be somewhat balanced by the $5.5m raised by the LDA call and the recent $5m placement taken up by Regal.
The last 12mth ~7% CPI number gives management some cover for needing more money when the CPI forecast was for 3%.
The two page virtual pilot plant process flow chart (09/11/22) in place of an actual pilot plant doesn't cut it as being to a BFS standard for me. Maybe others will disagree. It seemed the reality was there was no money left for a pilot plant and consideration was given to the long lead times regarding approval time frames.
Grange has spent $180m+ on Southdown over the years without getting it out of the ground. To some extent that is just a meaningless number and you could argue that project has been poorly managed.
For those reasons I suspect that more capital will be required for HIO to complete the BFS. I was thinking in the range of $10m-$15m and 6 - 9 months to complete. Of course I am open to being wrong and if the BFS can be completed without more capital in a shorter time frame that will obviously be a great outcome for all holders.
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(20min delay)