Mungy, I interpreted the reason for the bridging facility...

Mungy,  I interpreted the reason for the bridging facility differently from you.  I agree that VXL would have needed to show that in July (and at any time) that they could pay back the $20m initial facility but at that time the tailing dam and water issues were claimed to have been resolved and it was not unreasonable that the company needed a period (3 months as I understood it)  to commission the plant (from January to June they were supposed to have done a lot of testing but could not operate at name plate capacity due to tailings and water issues.   During the January to June period the grinding/screening and bagging equipment should have been tested (they trained staff for 24/7 operation) and these test they should have revealed any throughput/quality issues.  As I understand it the primary problem is that the ore needs more grinding than anticipated to release the impurities (i.e "to delaminate flakes & release gangue materials" with no "major reductions in flake size" - CEO presentation 25/11) - this should have been discovered in the testing/pre-commissioning in the period January to June.  The bridging facility was presumed by me (based on the disclosure provided) to be working capital during commissioning to acheive nameplate capacity during the July to September period.

The company announced (21/9):

"Production testing has identified process bottlenecks which when removed will improve grades, reduce processing costs and which are planned to increase production capacity by more than 50%"
Plant process improvement and enhancement plan will require only modest capex and are to
be implemented on close of Initial Finance Facility"

This contained a  presumption that nameplate capacity (or at least CF +ve operation) was being achieved to support this the bridging facility was increased to $5m by Chimarea on 5/10 and the company had drawn down $4.5m.  The 5/10 announcement confirmed my presumption and implied that commissioning was slightly extended (not unusual) by saying:

"- Key debt due diligence milestones passed as process nears completion
- First draw down of up to US$20m expected under Initial Facility" (the quarterly shows that they had already drawn down under "bridging" $3.3m by 30/9)

The 5/10 announcement went on to say:

"The required capex for these plant upgrades for a more than 50% increase in output capacity is modest and is not expected to exceed a current estimate of A$7m subject to final design detail."

This also implies that the $7m is required to upgrade the plant from 14,000 T/yr to 21,000T/yr thus reinforcing the implication that the existing plant was capable of operating at 14,000T/yr.  It was not until the quarterly of 30/10 that the terrible truth (that the "in spec" grinding capacity of the plant was only capable of operating at 2T/day - I thought this was a typo initially) was disclosed.