Sybella Benchmarking vs Peers, page-135

Yes, the reagent costs look to be nearly half of the OPEX. I think the most economic way forward would be to use higher pH leaching, cut the reagent input right down but tradeoff for RE extraction, particularly at depressed prices. The good thing with a heap leach is, when RE prices run (such as 2022) then you increase the acid being added and get more RE out. So it can be flexed dynamically depending on RE pricing.

But overall, it is very difficult to make money at current prices. Lynas and MP (two multi billion market cap companies) break even at 60-65 USD/kg. They aren't making money let alone making any return on the billions in sunk CAPEX. MEI will probably be the lowest cost producer overall, but they will achieve this by high grading their CDM resource (4000 ppm TREO head grade from a 2600 ppm resource), which will limit the tonnage rate. So MEI won't be flooding the market, or really making a dent in supply. In fact, ARR also are high grading their resource. The 3 mtpa was chosen to supply ore at 3800 ppm TREO for 20 years. When they modelled 6 mtpa, the recovered NdPr per tonne dropped from 832 to 743 g/t. So even with scale efficiency, the smaller 3 mtpa was a better economic case. On the other hand, I think Sybella can scale up to >10 mtpa depending on how they step out drill because the economics don't rely on high grading (although it would be nice to have). Will just have to see how they go with Phase 2 testwork and step out drilling.