Love your work by the way PSK but have a different take on the...

Love your work by the way PSK but have a different take on the value add of concentrating REEs. Obviously get more for the higher concentrate, the more work time and investement you do on anything the higher the value add and the higher the sale price. Herein lies the value of the spreadsheet to find the point of max return. One must factor in a few intangibles too like how competent a local technical workforce you have and proximity to semi sophisticated infastructure for higher end tech assistance.

I can see if you were doing a high end REE enrichement in China, Malaysia, India or even back in the USSR, now Russia you could get a whole lot of stuff done by people more qualified than your average Aussie Engineer for the cost of taking the family to Macas for dinner. In a comicly third world story the guys told us in that broker organised meeting I went too how the African lab just stopped trying to do the testing and didnt tell anyone! Tip for anyone travelling in the developing world, if you badly cut your foot and are hobbling down the street dont ask the guy on the corner is the hospital this way? He will say yes because he doesnt understand you half the time and he will not want to lose face or disappoint you by not giving an answer and the politest answer is yes! Ask where is the hospital? Lol! The guys probobly were too polite and asked the first couple of times is the lab work going well over in Tanzania when they had sent the samples in, i can imagine the answer, yes sir! Lol!

Great place for undiscovered resourses, lovely genuine friendly people but at this stage not as educated or organised as many other parts of the developing world. Not sure if this is part of the thinking of the guys in wanting to export less concentrated REEs or if its trying to hurry the process to the point of cash flow positive. Think the Chinese for example could enrich REEs in China cheaper than anywhere else in the world so the price difference you get, well just thinking if you got 40 percent for half strength but saved 10s or more of millions in start up costs and shaved months, a year, two, off start up time well I get the thinking.

All this REE thought and talk still quite new to me and most of us I guess and as someone else said i enjoy every post and learn a lot from reading them. There is a lot to learn should have listened more in Chemistry, if our they hadnt placed the girls volleyball courts next to the chem lab windows at high school I might have paid more attention to the teacher! Lol!
Good luck all Tretch