We know that our cost of production will be about $13/kg.
They are awaiting their completed PEA before they can comment on that topic. I expect they can show production costs favorable to the existing underground niobec operations.
I started doing more research last night into production costs and do far have not found any that can match our $13/kg that is mentioned in the Chance NI, so I'm confident that we're going to be the lowest cost producer out there. I believe is because all existing producers and planned projects are using the same basic extraction method, whereas ours will leverage the patented processes from Lerner.
Niobec is $20-25/kg, their expansion would be at $16/kg to go open pit. Cradles is 16.67/kg.
So, we should be able to be the lowest cost.
The NB nb project is planning a 7500 tpy production. I'm not sure what srsr had planned, but there are mine life calcs that are pretty standard like Taylors mine life calc. That would matter if we're mining based on the 18Mt historical, or if we have a larger resource. That's why the indicated resource is so important and the additional drilling recommended by RPA.
I think we'd be looking at 4000 tpd using taylors method on an 18MT resource for 13 years, or 16.7 years at 8400 tpd if 49 Mt as in hawke model.
The PEA can only be based on the amount of indicated or better resources, so it would likely have a base case toward that lower range.
The nice thing about lerner process is that it's scalable, so production can more readily be expanded over time than other methods.
I think we're looking at about 6580 tpy production, 6580000 kg/yr, 276 mil revenue, 190 million profit yr * 13 yrs for the base case.
That gives an NPV of about $1.5 billion assuming a $300 million capex. That gives a less than 2yr capital payback.
If we calculate a 50 Mt for D zone, life goes to 17 years, tpd to 8400, tpy, 13,800 tpy, 13.8 mill kg/yr, 580 mil rev/yr, 400 mil prof/yr, and an NPV of $4.2 billion.
Niobf is looking at 7500 tpy, probably $20/kg costs (in line with niobec underground), not sure about the mine life for them. But it seems that we would produce about 1000tpy less but have a better margin due to lower costs of production, and have a quicker capital payback since they will have a larger capex
