not financially viable?

There seems to be some misunderstandings about the economic potential of LRS' Peruvian iron sands. I will use a post made by phho0698 (23/9/11) as a framework for the argument.


As per the 7/9/11 announcement and the recent presentation to stock holders I did some number crunching.

17.4% heavy mineral content in the sands fraction which is an average of 62.5% of total sample mass. Therefore from 2B tons of sediment we have 1.25B tons of ?sands? fraction. Of this 217.5 million tons is heavy minerals.

The Mineral Liberation Analysis for the heavy mineral content which are of economic significant are:

41% - Magnetite (89,175,000 tons at $119 a ton, $10.6B resource value


Probably less because to the contaminants (TiO etc)


11% - Illmenite and other Ferro-titanium oxides (23,925,000 tons, not sure of value)


Ilmenite sells around $130/t -> $3.1B


0.9% - Zircon ( 1,957,000 tons at $30,000 a ton (assuming zircon and zirconium are the same thing), $58.7B resource value (this seems wayyy to high to be right but if its correct wow)


Zircon is a mineral. Zirconium is a pure element. Zircon sells for around $1,700/t -> $3.5B


Also latest presentation to stock holders said 1M ounces of gold at 1800 an ounce we have $1.8B resource of gold.


In summary
From 2,000,000,000 tonnes comes
Magnetite $10.6B
Ilmenite $3.1B
Zircon $3.5B
Gold $1.8B (just for fun)

TOTAL $19.2B

Sounds like a lot until we divide that into our original tonnage

=> $9.60/t

(and we have assumed 100% recovery).

The Scoping Study will need to find a way to fit under that very low bar. I will be surprised if they can do it.