A great post Flippa01 Thank you for taking the time to provide...

A great post Flippa01
Thank you for taking the time to provide an industry insiders view and some realistic numbers.
I too have been "in the industry" and had some involvement with the Murrin Murrin, Cawse, Bulong and Goro (back when it was owned by Inco before Vale bought Inco) laterite projects back in the late 90's.
As you say the autoclaves (and the rest of the High Pressure Acid Leach circuits) have extremely demanding process requirements with the Nickel slurry at very high temperatures and pressures (and the hypersaline water and 98% conc Sulphuric Acid).

The aforementioned laterite projects were real pioneers and went through extremely costly early stage commissioning and process optimizations. It is interesting that back in those days many wondered whether the Syerston project would ever get off the ground.
I also recall those plants getting their Cobalt processing up and running to provide cashflow for the Nickel processing cash drain.

It is of some comfort to me that AUZ and CLQ (and others) will all benefit from the huge learning curve that the early pioneers forged their way through and that though there will no doubt be site specific processing issues there is now a a good deal of understanding of the key processing requirements.

I have never really done the research on the similarities between these projects however I am encouraged by the relatively high percentage of Cobalt that both AUZ and CLQ have. (particularly in the expected higher Cobalt price environment that many expect the future holds)

I am fortunate to have invested early in AUZ and I see a lot of commentary about whether one stock is better than another. My humble opinion is that many of the Nickel/Cobalt stocks are likely to eventually prove to be very good investments, but regardless, that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and their favourites.
I do not know Benjamin Bell myself but know industry experts that do and I did make due diligence enquiries before investing in AUZ that gave me the comfort that the management team was robust and acted in the interests of shareholders. I believe it is prudent to stockpile the Scandium as Ben has indicated as Scandium is yet to have it's day (though I am sure it will come).

I have no doubt that there will be many fluctuations in the share price as AUZ meanders through the various stages of the life cycle of a mining share. There will be many good announcements and some disappointments along the way and I take no part in predicting share prices at different times of the cycle but do expect that there will be surges and pullbacks like there are with every other mining stock.

The question on many peoples minds is how much is AUZ worth and should one buy, sell or hold.
I think at high level this will only be revealed when JORC compliant resources, Bankable Feasibility Studies and the metallurgy for ALL projects are known and the cost of production is determined alongside the value of the resource to be mined.

IMHO this will be the point when additional investment will come from major brokers and institutions - but we are not major institutions - we are the more speculative investors who will be taking higher risks than institutions constitutions allow them to do and it is one of the rare scenarios where the retail investor can actually make more profit than the large organizations.

Thank you to all the posters who have provided valuable posts to us all (I see some familiar faces there)

Cheers and GLTAH

Interested Onlooker