To give you a serious reply to your question about timing. The NioCorp management team nor the SPAC had the luxury of time. The SPAC expires at the end of Q1 2023. If a deal is not done by charter, they return all investor money and dissolve the operation. They had already evaluated over 40 opportunities before they landed on NioCorp, and the clock was ticking loudly. NioCorp has a product that will take three-plus years to develop, and the world is already scrambling to secure its resources. Several players are entering this space, and the first ones with a path to production are the ones to ensure the best contracts. I suspect Mark and the team are scrambling to, as they say, make hay while the sun shines.
The pilot plant results have obviously had setbacks and delays. We know about the kiln delivery and power issues our friends across the pond reported. The power issue sounded familiar to me. Twice I've had to scramble to upgrade facilities' power capacity to accommodate industrial equipment for customers' factory acceptance tests. The L3 facility was a car dealer. I suspect it was not wired for much power-hungry industrial equipment. From an engineering perspective, there is a consideration of the sheer size of transformers to y vs. delta transformers. In these times of supply chain issues, it may not have been as easy as usual to call a vendor and have a new transformer dropped off at the L3 facility. I also know from experience any new processing facility WILL have integration and startup issues. That's just life when you bring in a lot of different equipment and make it play together. The industrial world is still far from plug-and-play. I also suspect some delay may have been caused by focus being diverted from the pilot plant during the scramble to close the merger. I also know from experience mergers and acquisitions are all-consuming and an absolute #$%^ buster. I'm still impressed they got it done in three months. That is a testament to how badly both sides want it done.
By law, they can not intentionally withhold the test results, and the penalties are extreme. If they had the results, we would have heard about them. I'm sure Mark would have loved to talk about the results at the REE conference and on Fox Business.
This will all play out over the next few months.
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