Niocorp Developments Ltd (NB)

[tedro84]

I have a few technical questions about the report. I'm trying to make sense of the production numbers. I'll use the Niobium for this example.

First, I want to note that the BS uses only probable mineral reserves. When you throw in the indicated and inferred resources the production rates are potentially much higher. This all relates to the conservative nature of the BFS as pointed out by others that are required in NI 43-101.

On to the numbers. There are probable reserves of 31.7 million tonnes of ore at 0.79% niobium. 31.7*.079% = 250,000 tonnes of contained niobium. This is where you can plug in the indicated or inferred values in the study and come up with the potential for a much higher value.

Next, if we take the recovery rate of 82.4% for niobium and multiply by the 250,000 tonnes we would have 206,000 tonnes, but the study shows 214,000 tonnes. The values for TiO2 and Sc work out as expected. 8,000 tonnes is not a rounding error. Am I missing something here?

What is "payable metal"? Does anyone know how that number was figured?

I'd also like to understand the annualized production rates 7055 tonnes of niobium over 32 years gives 225,760, which doesn't match any of the other numbers I come up with.

I'm sure the payable metal and annualized numbers are something I'm missing due to my lack of understanding mining reports, but the recovered Nb number has me concerned.