You got a gold star for enthusiasm.
In my opinion you are missing some points in understanding the processes or potential margins involved.
Let's start with how DSO works.
Build the mine, remove overburden, dig out the ore (kaolin plus sand), put that ore into bags and ship out to customers who will process the ore themselves.
As per PFS cost estimate for this was 28 million, let's say 40 million at todays costs, this would still require a CR as ADN now have about 30 million in the bank and about 4 million a quarter in operating costs (or 15-16m a year).
Yes, this can get ADN to production and for that reason I have recently written that there is a good chance they will move this way.
A few months ago, prior to DFS we have been discussing potential margins achievable in DSO operation and from memory it was about 60 AUD per ton (using current shipping costs) or 36 million per year if all 600 ktpa was achieved (costs include just mining, packing and shipping, no other overheads).
If the company scaled down the ambitions and office/management/sales staff they could manage overheads costs at 25-30 million per year leaving 5-10 million per year for future investments which means it would take long time to save the remaining 55-60 million (most of the the initial 40 million for DSO operation is included in the 93 million capex).
This would allow ADN to operate and survive till conditions improve.
HPA.
As far as I understand the AEM UK plant is still in the feasibility stage. This means 2-3 years from operational when ADN can confirm that this would be a suitable plant design.
Your questions.
Company at this stage can change business plans so DFS can be changed.
Yes they can go back to DSO.
The DSO means shipping ore, no sand removal involved.
DFS stage one plant removes about 45% of sand from ore leaving 90% kaolin and 10% sand as KCN90 at capex of 93 million.
Back to HPA ideas.
To get 2,000 tpa of HPA only 13-15,000 tons of ore would be needed (out of 600,000 available), alumina is about 30-35% of kaolin.
HPA production is a chemical process starting with using acid to dissolve kaolin. Sand does not need to be removed, sand is silica, non reactive component. Recent JM remark about stage one plant being able to produce HPA feed was just usual spin, plain ore is a good feed material.
Cost estimate for the small 2,000 tpa HPA plant is somewhere around 80-100 million (10,000 tpa plants being build by some of the other companies are over US 200 million).
A little bit outside current cash reserves.
Impossible to say how long it would take to build the copy of the AEM plant as it doesn't exist yet.
TLDR,
There is a chance that ADN will move back to DSO option, but the margins in this option are rather slim so while potentially viable maybe not very attractive.
HPA plant can't be built as it's feasibility and design are not finished yet, capex cost for HPA plant is out of ADN range.
There is no news blackout.
There are no news to announce.
They are trying to find customers for their stage one plant products, who are willing to pay the asked price. This seems to be difficult.
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