A tonne of Nb2O5 will make slightly more than a tonne of Ferroniobium, somewhere between 5-10%, but this also depends upon the conversion process recovery etc...
I've been using the $50,000/t for pentoxide, but scaled that back to the $US45k/t instead just to be conservative.
I've read that the Niobium market is currently growing at around 4.4% or 4,500t/yr, which is excellent for us.
Starting at 1Mt/a rate, allows the operation to setup for larger, while reducing initial capital for the build, then after 1-2 years of operation (and lots more drilling to up reserves), we could expand to 2-3Mt/a. you build in the allowance for expansion, without all the initial cost.
I've been searching the net for the JORC resources of other Niobium contenders and existing mines. Araxa is a one out freak. Niobec had resources of 658Mt at 0.41% (2013), others like Niocorp 36Mt at 0.81% (reserve, lots more low grade resources 0.3% -0.5%). Alkane Resources Dubbo project has 75Mt at 0.44%, even Mt Weld of Lynas has 37Mt at 1.02% (and is the closest grade wise..
An interesting snippet I found is that the 2 other Niobium mines follow CBMM guidelines for pricing Niobium. We wouldn't want to swamp the world with too much Niobium in one year, so this is another reason to start small and build up. I suspect CBMM could crank up production, drop the price to $10-$15/kg to kill off the competition, while still making a bit of profit, if they wanted, but it would come at a large capital cost and use up their best resources over a decade or so and reduce profitability.
We'd be foolish to not work with CBMM, unless we had some major long term contracts with major users of Niobium, but even then realistically working with CBMM works to everyone's advantage, including users that can work with a forward price knowing supply will be there.
Unlike most other deposits around the world (except the Araxa freak), we seem to have a high percentage of high grade ore relative to overall resource size, but I expect the lower grade probably unweathered minerlisation deeper down to increase greatly with time and lots more drilling.
The deeper stuff all appears to be around the 0.3% grade which is similar in lots of other deposits, all another 40-50 meters deeper than our high grade stuff. If it's the host intrusion, it could be hundreds of meters thick, but is all irrelevant to us. There is no point in trying to mine any of the deeper mineralization for a couple of decades, so no point worrying about it, or even drilling it.
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