Your right, building a plant shouldn't be that hard, apart from...

Your right, building a plant shouldn't be that hard, apart from the commissioning stage which can take up to 2 years. Gold takes three months.

The main problem with VML has been the infighting and a change of direction. The board has not been able to transition from spruiking to a mining and production board. If you look at the board, their history is one of proving up the resource and selling the resource, not going into production. The new CEO doesn't have any mining experience so what does tell you about the direction of the company...full 360.
I should have read the writing on the wall when Vital stopped work on the plant...that did not make sense.

The VML plant was designed for cracking. The concentrate then would have been sent to Reetec for separation and refinement to 999 purity. The partnership was a win, win for both parties. Both startups working together .Reetec offered a low-cost separation solution, VML providing a product that suited the technology. The benefit would have been a voiding Chinese processor, who don't pay that much for the stuff.Rare earths are not that rare.( I think you will find Peak will find it hard to make money out of it).The offtake agreement looks good on paper but the Chinese are tuff negotiators who know their industry.... There are only a few places where you can sell the concentrate too and that's the problem. Bare in mind the VML plant was a pilot plant working towards a BFS. It would have ticked all the boxes.

The problem with the whole rare earth market, was that while the West world wasn't watching China got a strangle on the whole on the industry.
In the words of Maxwell Smart missed it by that much.....that is the VML story. VML/Reteec would have been the third producer outside of China.

Hopefully the court case Jeff Atkins v VML will share some light on what really happened and how VML imploded.
There is also a potential court case with Reetec ,we dont know which identity the agreement was signed with. Was it with VML Canada or was it with VML, and if it is the case, VML will have another contingent liability.

Where to from here. In the words of my mechanic ...its f*ed mate.
VML reputation in Canada is shot ,there is no coming back from this.
The best we can hope for is a buyer.