@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 1
sttime 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 5
thASX 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”. )
