You would be right except for this line of the story...
CBMM’s techniques are such a closely-guarded secret that the Asian steelmakers that bought a stake -- including China’s Baosteel Group Corp. and Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. (5401) -- have never been allowed to carry out technical due diligence work.
I dont know about you but Scott doesnt strike me as a tech guy. He apparently is going to need to learn the process for himself.
The thing that pops into my head is SOE took 900Kg to "process" and never got it done. Could it be that SOE could not figure out the process it requires to refine the ore?
Scott better start looking for some valedictorian chemists for some idea of what the process actually takes.
The hard work of getting the Chinese to use Niobium is done
Yes and it is done by someone else. Scott now has to convince the Chinese that he can produce what they want cheaper and faster or there is no reason to switch suppliers. First he has to be able to produce it at all. That is apparently harder that the armchair miners have lead us to believe. The rocks are now not just rocks. The are puzzles in the shape of rocks.
So now Scott not only has to figure out how to get the rock out of the ground but he has to learn how to get the niobium out of the rocks
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
