@bomber : we are not talking about the same thing: profit is different from profitability. To be clear
"Profitability is closely related to profit, but it is the metric used to determine the scope of a company's profit in relation to the size of the business. Profitability is a measurement of efficiency . It is expressed as a relative, not an absolute, amount. Profitability can further be defined as the ability of a business to produce a return on an investment based on its resources in comparison with an alternative investment. Although a company can realize a profit, this does not necessarily mean that the company is profitable."
Some of the reasons for my opinion on COB, from one of my previous post earlier this month: 1. COB Cobalt concentration: key advantage with Gravity separation process:
The difference between sulphide and laterite ore is huge. COB can perform a simple gravity upgrade (refer to ASX releases). This is a very low cost way of separating out the pyrite (containing the cobalt) and the waste material using a coarse crush of around 1mm. In other words COB would return 80% of the waste back to the pit with minimal processing.
This spiral gravity separation technique on the quartz increases the original concentration by 5 times to 0.4-0.5%. ( a DRC head grade level)
The refinery then processes only this remaining 20% of the material(at a 0.4-0.5% Co feed) = large savings on CAPEX. and OPEX.
You simply can’t do this with a laterite (AUZ, CLQ, ARL etc) where most of the ore goes to the refinery. The refinery is where the bulk of the cash costs are incurred.
2. Refining process: the lower Temp/pressure levels of the leach circuit:
From the April 11th Investor Presentation on COB website, the p. 22 shows another major difference with laterite projects and this was the 1sttime numbers were mentioned. COB will leach at only 5-10 atmospheres and 130 Celsius versus HPAL 50 atmospheres and around 250 Celsius for Ni/Co laterite projects = Large savings in operating costs. Basically COB leach occurs under similar conditions to a kitchen coffee machine.
(Also as per March 5thASX release the calcine and leaching phases tests results are excellent with 96% of Cobalt extraction on a reliable basis. “The key process steps have been validated”. )
