I hear you, TF, yet on today's conf call, Norman Chow went into great detail on not just one or two but several ways of cutting both Capex and Opex, including the elimination of major pieces of expensive equipment. He also made it clear that some of the outside agencies used by TetraTech were working with leach solutions that were a month old (degraded, i assume) and therefore the efficiencies of the continual run at Kemetco's pilot plant were lost, leading to higher separation/production costs.
Norm said he wasn't allowed to talk in specific financial terms and that a NI-43-101 would be needed to talk about specific cost reductions, but I really do expect that Capex to come down to around $400M or below and production costs to come down to the $0.80s by the time of the BFS, and it sounds like EMD/CMD/LMD will be included in that.
It was a very good conf call, btw. I like the format of the moderator assimilating all the incoming Qs and really asking some very intelligent Qs on the basis of that and letting Larry, COO Mike McLeod and Norm Chow have the time to go into very detailed responses.
Hopefully, AMY and/or IR will come up with a detailed set of bullet points that came out of the conf call for releasing as a NR.
One thing that i personally found intriguing was Norm Chow's entire discussion of the EMD/CMD/LMD segment prospects. He revealed that the battery companies have to INDIVIDUALLY TEST EVERY BATTERY they produce on a daily basis (millions every day) b/c of the impurities ALWAYS present b/c of the ubiquitous crushing/roasting steps performed by miners in China, S.Africa and elsewhere.
AMY will have a huge advantage here with end-users because their hydrometallurgic process involves NO roasting/crushing. They could save the battery companies a lot of money with a much more reliably pure product.
Chow also mentioned that Kemetco has a lot of experience with the battery segment b/c they and their predecessor co. have worked in this area for some 15 years.
Larry was quite forthright about market conditions and also how all miners' costs are going up significantly. He also had a lot to say about the specific dynamics of the EMM market as it pertains to China, insuring that AMY will be lowest cost producer.
He spoke of how, despite the much higher Capex, the big steel, aluminum and battery players now have in AMY an independently confirmed (by TetraTech), relatively low-cost EMM source at Artillery Peak. So, yes, he said, the project has in this way been clearly de-risked.
There was much, much more to the conf call...
I'd just briefly mention that Larry was honest about how the big hedge funds are playing these markets and miners in particular up and down and that things will definitely improve for miners going forward "because we need these metals."
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