spm vs american vanadium corp, page-2

"Do I miss something?"

Hi pinetree,

Actually there is something. Head grade doesn't tell the whole story, as per an earlier post late last year:

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see 09 April 2010 interview with RW on website:

http://www.niplats.com.au/display/index/investors-media

My understanding from this was:

Head grade of raw rock 0.30 - 0.3X% V2O5
But tenor (% of V2O5 that is IN THE MAGNETITE within that rock) is more important.
Beneficiation process to crush, grind, wash then magnetically separate the rock to create a magnetite concentrate represents only about 20% of capex/opex of producing end product (ferrovanadium) that can feed into the steel mills.
It's really the tenor that is important in determining where you sit in the cost curve of the end product.
Tenor around 2.6% V2O5 is the most exciting thing about the project and in the realm 150%-200% better than any other Australian project.
This is what is considered to be the real world class characteristic of the deposit.


Also likely capex/opex savings due to sheer scale of resource and ease of mining (zone of pre-feasibility = 6 X 2km slab of mineralisation, up to 50-80m thick, outcropping in the west and dipping away at a very shallow angle of 4%).


Note: this is simply my understanding of the points I understood RW to be making, could contain errors, and is put up for discussion only. Please DYOR and make your own interpretations. Comments invited.

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Also see page 5 of the last quarterly for a nice graphic demonstrating how we compare to other projects based on this concentrate grade:

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20110429/pdf/41ybjs8xfhrb8t.pdf

Cheers.