Mt Weld is probably the second largest known resource. We have a designated 'Niobium rich rare metal resource', which includes parts of Crown and Coors sectors. These two sectors have a combined Nb resource of 37.7m t @1.07%. Not included in this is Anchor, which is known to be rich in Nb.
Interestingly, this was recognised early and a scoping study was done in 2004. This was in the very early days of Mt Weld REE development, so in the end Nb ended up getting shuffled to the side (and forgotten?) as REE was favoured.
Anyway, the numbers that came from the scoping study were as follows:
'The initial capital costs for an open pit mine at Mt Weld and processing in China are estimated at approximately US$350m. Annual revenues and operating costs are estimated at US$385million and US$300million respectively, yielding an operating income of approximately US$85million per annum. Net profit after tax is estimated at in excess of US$40million on an un-geared basis.' https://lynasrareearths.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/RareMetalsannouncement06Oct04.pdf
A couple of things to note: 1. At the time, price of Nb was ~US$20 (now US$50 and relatively stable). 2. In the very early days, LYC was planing to build LAMP in China. 3. Capex and operating cost in the study were starting from scratch - at the time Mt Weld was untouched. I would assume these numbers would be much much lower now.
As mentioned, LYC is looking at this- I hope it doesn't get forgotten again, regardless of how rich LYC becomes from the REEs. If we can be (product) diverse, it will only be better for us.. and we should never sneeze at the potential of >$100m in yearly profit.
LYC Price at posting:
$7.35 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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