Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
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If you google 'stock bashing' you do however learn everything.
Great job googling that to find a hole in his answer which really tells nobody anything..
Mumbles, good morning, yes, that's certainly the case; my specific concern was the fact that PA was unable to explain the reasons for the price of mixed NdPr being near the same as discrete Nd or Pr. I would have hoped that he would be aware of this level of detail, given that it underpins PRE's decision to sell mixed NdPr. Perhaps he was aware but chose not to quote this detail due to the phrasing of the question from the analyst.
Something along the lines of
“... Pr and Nd are so similar that for magnets, they are practically identical. So manufacturers of neodymium magnets don’t bother to separate them. Most neodymium in magnets actually is 25-35% praseodymium, so only about 65-75% of the “neodymium” is really neodymium.”
https://idealmagnetsolutions.com/knowledge-base/rare-earth-metals-12-things-about-neodymium/
Good morning Charles, there does seem to be an acceptance that NdPr is sold as a combined product both in oxide and metal form. All pricing sites Including SMM quote a daily price for the oxide mix/ metal alloy
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GK, thanks for the response. Actually, I would hope for PA to know this level of detail. It may damage PRE's credibility if they were to act in a way that suggested a lack of understanding of these aspects during high level conversations with prospective customers.
Well Charles, a little digging and whowudavthought!
Then again i suspect none of us are REE oxide to magnet metal alloy process chemical engineers - the analyst, the CEO, me nor you?
Two things: it turns out standard NdPr oxide is a 75% Nd to 25% Pr contained metal mix of the two oxides and more interesting than that also it looks like your typical alloy formulation for NdFeB magnets uses not pure Nd metal derived from NdPr oxide or pure Nd oxide but instead the oxide mix including the Praseodymium is turned into a mixed Nd + Pr metal alloy via an electrochemical molten salt furnace process. This then goes into the magnet metal formulation. Typical input proportions for the magnet metal alloy P48 here:
https://www.peakresources.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Peak-Resources-NdPr-White-Paper-NdPr-The-Biggest-Blind-Spot-in-the-Global-Commodity-Market-x-.pdf
Looks like another great non issue on the LSE-PRE forum then.
Oh dear.
Next!
GK, when discussing the plant, PA essentially says "it's difficult because Nd and Pr are close together", then later he says "we won't be separating NdPr, we'll sell NdPr oxide only", so my point is: how does the former relate to the latter? I expect that the separation process is indeed difficult, but for reasons other than those mentioned by PA.
On the subject of selling NdPr oxide, it was also concerning that PA didn't know the implications for potential customers of supplying the separated products as opposed to the NdPr mix. His view seemed to have been informed only by the price on the metal.com website! I hope there's more depth to his knowledge, and to be fair, I certainly expect that there is. I'm sure his use of "that's above my pay grade" raised a wry smile for many.
China, I was referring to LYC's Malaysia original later stage oxide separation operations rather than Kalgoorlie. The concern is perhaps over-confidence. Are PRE taking all the steps that they might in order to reduce the risk of failure at Saltend? Do PRE not at least need a small scale proof of concept to demonstrate viability to potential offtakers?
With your last sentence Charles you need to listen again. The analyst asked, PA explained why they won't, the economics are obvious.
With the rest I heard refreshing openess on the knowledge and skill that will be required with this. I do wonder what you would prefer instead from a CEO?
Charles, You are obviously confused ~ Naughty PA for doing that to you, although I give him top prize.
Strange that you agree that LYC will also take a year to tune their Kal' plant when all they are doing there is what Pensana is doing at LJ ie removing the Th & Ce? As to a pilot plant, If I am reading it correctly Saltend is a Pilot plant, all be it a full scale one that will precede further expansion and it will also be taking feed from other mining operations so one would expect there to be a lengthy learning curve, Did you also pick up that PRE is already looking for more real estate :) to expand operations ~ which sort of indicates their confidence that they have all of their questions already answered.
A few questions on PRE's position on Oxide separation, following discussion of this process during the webinar
PA, 21:35 “…the separation process is the key… Nd and Pr… are virtually identical… the separation process between those two is actually quite complex, it’s difficult to achieve… once you start the separation process… unless you get it exactly right you don’t get the recovery that you’re looking for… it’s a very temperamental and difficult process to setup and get right …we are allowing a year to get that setup right and hopefully achieve it and get to that point“
A harsh interpretation of the above might be that there is still some significant work to do on the Saltend process; they know roughly what to do, and are gambling that they will be able to work out the details within a year of the plant being operational.
Should we not expect a pilot operation to validate the process before building Saltend? I can find no mention of one.
How can they do Saltend FEED without this?
Didn’t it take Lynas much longer than a year?
Will this proposition be attractive to potential offtakers?
Why does PA discuss separating Nd from Pr when he later says that PRE are going to sell only a mixed NdPr oxide?