Golkor Inc (GKOR)

[gump90]

A smelter gets EVERYTHING .. all the metals. For some they penalize the clients .. but they do get the metal. So in some ways they do ' steal ' from you. It's a very lucrative business. It's all a matter of industrial chemistry. All the clients prepare their concentrates ahead of time to get the maximum recovery of THEIR metals. If you have an ore body that contains nickel and copper .. you would make two concentrates to send to Vale .. a nickel concentrate and a copper concentrate. The nickel concentrate would have some copper in it but the smelter really does not like too much. The client cannot maximize his copper profits that way. But in the copper concentrate there will also be nickel. The client loses nickel profits in this case. Same goes for lead / zinc smelters. Those clients send a zinc concentrate and a lead concentrate. Smelters will say they get mostly ' clean ' concentrates but some concentrates are 'dirty'. If you have 'dirty' concentrates the smelter penalizes you heavily ( but they sill recover the metal though .. LOL ). This post speaks very broadly but should give you the idea. Basically the new Vale smelter would have 2 circuits .. a nickel smelter and a copper smelter. It's not like 'one size fits all'. The big money for Vale is in the nickel. I think smelters are built for the mines that the smelter owner has themselves. But I believe the Governments mandate that they must also take a certain tonnage of custom concentrates from other miners. I hope this helps. Cheers.