I visited the site today and spoke to the same staff I met when...

I visited the site today and spoke to the same staff I met when I last visited in June. They were again civil and informative.
The LinkedIn post beat my arrival by an hour and covers a number of questions I had. As Patmeate anticipated, there will now be a period of testing which will include a thorough seven-day test of the spray roaster conducted by visiting Tenova specialist staff. On-site management expect the whole test regime to be completed by mid-October, allowing commencement of 24/7 production of MgO.
All the components of the reduction furnace, the last major element to be installed in the MgO-to-Mg plant, are now on site. Completion of assembly and the necessary testing and refinement of the circuit is still a while off though.

I am confident that the demonstration plant will produce magnesium metal and that Stage 2 would follow suit. My anxiety is that the company is years away from a positive cash flow and it's difficult to see how the very large sum required to design and build Stage 2 ($250 million? More?) could be raised without ruinous dilution of the already formidable SOI number. If they haven't already, it's time senior management bashed on every possible government door for support in producing a critical mineral for which there is already an offtake agreement with an overseas buyer.