With you there HB in that for the whole show to move forward...

With you there HB in that for the whole show to move forward from here the sulphate circuit must be shown to be iron clad reliable with no metallurgical road blocks. Its importance cannot be understated. After all many a project has had its wheels fall off at this stage with metallurgy issues And when you look at the landscape with a broader perspective, the fact that they are pushing on with the sulphate product and its associated complexities and costs, not just in dollars but with time, this should tell a story to the more astute observer that there is more going on than meets the eye.
Imo if the product was just a concentrate the DFS would be about done and dusted by now so the sulphate route must have an as yet undeclared purpose. Don’t Vale have a huge secretive nickel supply contract with Tesla? How much simpler would it be for them to get the complete product?
And just reviewing the two regional ex vale leases granted of late, Santa Ines and Terra roxa. The former having its boundary doctored to link up with Jaguar is telling. Communication from last Nov mentioned a detected mafic intrusion that will be investigated but it’s roxa that is piquing. The Vale leases directly to the north, bordering roxa contain the Mundial laterite resource being heavily drilled by them, clearly from satellite photos. This shows the latest drilling and distance to the boundary of roxa.



A closer look showing 100m x 100m definition drilling very recently


I’ve posted previously that there was 50m x 50m drilling by them much further south almost bordering the roxa northern boundary so this is obviously a serious campaign being undertaken by them to declare another vast laterite resource.
My point being here - the roxa permit, being so close to this laterite discovery would not have been handed over without exploration ie, without knowing the limits of this new resource. So it’s my thesis that it’s been early stage explored, no laterite but most likely another type of ore has shown up here…

From the Nov release…. “Terra Roxa is located immediately south of Vale’s Mundial nickel-laterite deposit which is the laterite cap of another mafic-ultramafic intrusion. The Company has completed landowner access agreements and started early-stage exploration including mapping, rock-chip and soil sampling on the 100%-owned projects. Geophysical surveys and first-pass RC-drilling will be planned once exploration targets have been determined.Drilling of the greenfields exploration pipeline will be undertaken systematically over the next 18 months using the RC rig, and diamond rigs will be dedicated to projects once a discovery is made.”

There is no information about the Mundial discovery I could find anywhere. Its declaration here is intimate. “..diamond rigs will be dedicated to projects once a discovery is made…” is language I like and shows a certain inevitability about it imo…