Under 3 quarters of cash as at end Jun21 and the everyone waiting to sell the scoping study "mid January" before the inevitable delays getting material and met work done in Oz etc. So CR before SS, Jan22 with well leaked excitement as the post CR carrot or sooner this year while the market isn;t expecting it?
More tonnes in MRE's the market expects shouldn't suck in new punters for more than a day. Grade/assemblage are the limiting factors and KM, Nhacutse, Poiombo are all dogs with the same leg action from surface. 6.5% THM over the sort of large tonnage, long life required these days is bottom of the pack 'revenue:cost' against competitors is the problem. Might wipe it's own face before finance costs in a SS, maybe even in PFS or DFS more constrained by capex/opex reality, but the lowest margin players go broke and thus rarely get funded. Simply isn;t room for everyone.
"This work will also allow us to see the potential value of the
full range of Valuable Heavy Mineral (VHM) products"... management must be talking up Va-Ti-mag and the new black, Monazite hey?
Corridor Vanadium Ti-mag post roast is good quality but demand and off-take are even bigger problems than pricing. Vanadium is bouncing along the bottom even in this covid supply squeeze commodity spike, Demand for Va-mag unlikley to improve if China's steel production downturn is serious, and low Iron ore pricing also kills any high Fe-credits. On my figures Va-Ti-Mag product might get US$100/t which equals extra US$0.70/t of ore recoverable in-ground value. $14M on a 20Mtpa operation is certainly handy if you find a buyer, but doesn;t change the dial.
Monazite credits, currently priced at $6000/t of 60% REO Mon, would be meaningful if Corridor had much. Don;t think it does unfortunately. CeO2 is usually 45% of the TREO in monazite, which itself comprises roughly 60% TREO (ie 1% Monaite in HM contains 0.60*0.45=0.27% CeO2). As per the table below, CeO2=0.6% in the non-mag, which means the non-mag conc has ~2% Monazite. Non-mag con is only 3.9% the CUP HMC product, so the CUP HMC contains 0.02*0.039=0.08% monazite (reporting to the non mag con). Assuming roughly ~80% THM recovery after wet plant losses, in ground monazite = 0.0008/0.8=0.1% (ignoring losses to elsewhere).
20M tonnes pa operation 6.5% THM and 80% wet plant recovery will produce approx 1Mtpa of HMC through the CUP upgrade plant. ). 0.08% of this HMC is Monazite reporting to the mixed non-mag con product, or 800tpa monazite. 800t @ 6000/t = $4.8mpa revenue before any discount for third party non-mag processing and further processing losses. Yawn... monazite and REE boom not going to move the dial either sorry to say.
Meanwhile, BSE out with a new DFS for Toliara other day. MRQ post-roast ilm product is similar spec to sulphate here, but could sell into either market. Price difference between sulphate/slag markets really only correlates to TiO2 content. MRQ ilmenite is 47.5% TiO2, which equates to $183/t. Any effort to lift TiO2 grade will by definition probably lower recovery to product so zero sum gain. However, I doubt MRQ's 2022 scoping study will have an ilmenite price with a 1 handle lol... selling the dream is very different to selling reality.
(20min delay)