Steve,
(1) I like your idea about the SL govt posting a grant for expansion. That would be the logical approach. However, given the government's taste for taxation, I am not sure they are of the right mind set for that. We see that in the US government as well. Those convinced that increasing taxes is the right way to go typically don't support investing in the private sector. I hope you are right, but, I am skeptical based on redistribution economic theory and lemmings that follow that theory.
(2) The cool thing about the processing plant is that it does not need to be built all at once. The first phase, as Bryan puts it, is fairly simple in that it focusses on the PGMs and the gold. Mr. Beckman is on point for that effort and I am very curious what he has up his sleeve. I suspect it will relatively low cost and very scalable. Scalability is the key since phase 1 is to process their existing stockpile of black sands. I suspect that as this phase wraps up, they will begin scaling up to support processing other's sands. Also, they can sell the proceeds of phase 1 for cash flow and stock pile the tailings for phase 2.