The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring financial educator and author Jared Dillian has been released. Listen here.
Ah the below should be $190m not billion.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12710538/filing-history/MzM5NDkwOTkwNWFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0
Small profit margin however so hopefully they have struck a great deal with us
Thanks to Craig on telegram.
Offtake RNS on Monday is with Fujax with £190b revenue in 2022.
"Just took a look at Fujax full accounts on companies House. UK incorporated so easy to find. Turnover £190bn in 2022, boils down to £1.422bn profit . Actually similar or higher revenues to Mercuria"
Confirmation it is the Lithium OT that was being finalised!! 💥⛏️💥
https://x.com/marulaplc/status/1766071379248710019?s=52&t=8TEeQFBMfWx-rw3r7z88FA
I'm looking forward to finding out the volume and value of byproducts from Blesburg lithium plant as we have been told they will more than cover the operating costs.
https://twitter.com/MarulaPlc/status/1766045901800272044?t=b97BOy2vpXVLXXhmEBl9lw&s=19
⚒ Samples of Coltan/Tantalum, a high-value by-product of our lithium mining at Blesberg Mine, are en route for testing and assay.
#MARU #BlesbergMine #Lithium
Just tantalite is 20% of each tone
As stated below, it contains about 40% TiO2
Therefor each tone of ore contains 8%TiO2 (I believe they have still to find this sweet spot but current drill campaign is now on the sweet spot)
To get from 8% to 40% (ore to pure titanite worth maybe $250/t) you need 6 tonnes (80% recovery)
To get from 40% to 95% (synthetic rutile worth $2000/t) you need around 17 tonnes (again 80% recovery)
Mining costs I estimate $5/t due to very favourable soft rock and from surface deposit
Processing costs $5/t gravity separation stage
Another $5/t for acid leach stage
To get 1ton of titinite, 6x$5 + 6x$5 = $60 + $65? admin costs = maybe $125. Titinite worth $250/t hence 2:1 revenue to costs
To get 1ton of 95% rutile 17x5 (mining) +17x5 (processing) + 3x5 (acid) + $130 admin costs = 85+85+130 = $300. Rutile worth $2000/t hence 6.5:1 revenue to costs. Potential exist to increase recoveries through correct grind size and to produce a 99% pigment product selling for $4000-5000/t. Acid leaching may have a higher recovery rate than 80% also (some copper projects are above 96% recovery)
Sovereign project revenue to cost profile is 3.5:1 for comparison
Oldslow, here is my post previously:
7 Feb 2024 09:29
From the scoping study you supplied;
https://minedocs.com/22/Titan-PEA-6292022.pdf
This other USA company, Iperion X - what I noticed from the document;
They were able to define a JORC mineral resource of just under a billion tonnes of mineralised ore after only 107 drills.
EEE currently at 64(ish) but the next 40 will be mostly closer spaced in target areas (including 4x diamond drills)
From Iperionx-
"The Mineral Resource is based on 107 drill holes totaling 4,101 m, and occupies an area roughly 6.2 km (north) by 3.6km (east);"
"Production target of 243 million tons of mineralized material over a life of mine of 25 years"
(EEE have so many billions of tons of mineralised material, EEE are in a different league volume wise)
Clay was mentioned, which is more difficult and costly to process
" In the FPP, the feed is de-slimed to separate clay and the sand. The slimes are directed to the thickener where they are thickened and then filtered."
The actual titanium content is low, contained in sand. This is more of a rare earth deposit with more expensive mining and processing costs, although it is a great piece of work and looking forward to the EEE version from the same author.
Hi bankruptcy & GTA5.
Nope, I haven't overlooked that, my reasoning is
20% of the orebody is titanite. Titanite contains around 30-37% TiO2 so therefor around 6-7% TiO2 contained in titanite.
Inferring from the above suggests the actual content of TiO2 will be closer to 10%, and we know rock chip samples are 10-20% TiO2 and they are targeting higher grade zones
Rutile group minerals account for 3-4%
Looks like the zone they found will contain 10%TiO2
Rutile will acount for 0.3-0.4% TiO2 per ton of ore
Rutile sells for $2000/t. That would be worth $6-8/t of ore as a byproduct hence me claiming that they could cover the cost of mining.
https://www.mining.com/web/making-the-grade-understanding-exploration-results/
*as a rule of thumb, $10/t mining cost*
Pitfield is soft rock at surface so I'm assuming mining costs will be considerably less than $10/t hence my claim
Https://minedocs.com/22/Titan-PEA-6292022.pdf
Here is an example of a PEA Carrie out by one of the baord members
Thanks to ML on telegram:
Done some intensive research on our latest recruits & have to say I’m very encouraged for a number of reasons.
Ms Marriott - good track record & highly experienced (Video to show you who she is)
Mr.Dardengo - fabulous appointment & I’ll tell you why this is important. He’s the number man & he has extensive experience putting together Scoping Studies & valuations. SB is in full flow to generate the 💰 calculations. He recently completed this for Iperion (IPX NASDAQ) who are fully focused on Titanium in Tennessee 🇺🇸
Mr.Nicolson - again, a scholar from the mining & mechanical engineering with over peer reviewed and published reports, thesis & cited across multiple industries being heavily involved with ilmenite & CSIRO test equipment.
The board are playing a blinder here & I can tell you now, I won’t be putting any bulletin board randomers opinion or thoughts ahead of anything SB & his team communicate via RNS.
This is a phenomenal opportunity for all involved now.
Lookes like the rutile credits alone could cover all mining costs :)
"Titanite, a calcium titanium silicate mineral, accounts for ~67% of the total contained TiO 2 and makes up around 20% of the ore by mass.
Ti bearing Fe oxides (14-22%), ilmenite (7- 16%) and rutile group minerals (Ti-Oxides) (3-4%) account for the rest."
(Rutle group minerals are 95% TiO2 and sell for $2000/t)
Did some rough calcs based on other titanium hard rock and sand resources. Checked the economics of copper leaching resources too.
The margins for mining/crushing/separating titanite ore (without acid stage) would range from 5:1 to 2:1 revenue to opex (based on selling unrefined titanite for under $200/t).
Favourable aspects: super low opex due to soft rock, zero stopping costs as at surface and high grade continuous, low infostructure capex as rail, road, power, gas, water all on site so IRR would be high due to low initial project cost. Infostructure costs at remote locations can be up to 2/3 of a projects capex.
Including the acid stage increases the margins to more like 20:1 or 10:1 which are just incredible.
Sean has already spoken to investors at events in the past about an acid process being the highest margin and expected processing route. This will have been known by recent high flyer additions to the management team before they joined yet they still.set the options at 14p and 18p
The demonstrator plant will also allow them to test the economics of a simple titanite ore vs first stage acid product vs final stage pigment process. And in every case they can model for a 50 year mine life and choose to go as big as they want as they have enough titanium to supply then world for 100 years.
Rains,
I've not asked again. Feel free to message him yourself.
I found info on feed rates in this RNS
https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/marula_mining/news/rns/story/w6mp5gx
"The Processing Plant has been designed with up-front crushing capacity of 20 tonnes per hour (“TPH”) with initial milling capacity set at 5TPH and with the capacity to be increased to 20TPH"
The initial target contains visible high grade material but not sure on its average grade.
Let's assume 2:1 ore to product.
5tph at 10h/day x 30 days = 300hours x5tph = 1500t at 2:1 = 750t of copper. $1000/t for 20% copper = $750k/month revenue
At 20tph that becomes $3m/month revenue
No idea on opex but if it's anything like blesburg it should be under 30% so quite a nice profit margin.
$15-20m profit a year? 300%IRR or more?
Https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/1042370/empire-metals-delighted-with-new-studies-at-pitfield-titanium-discovery-1042370.html
“With our newly appointed metallurgical team we are ready to successfully execute and expedite the next phase of project development and we will continue to bolster this group with highly talented and experienced titanium industry professionals.
“I look forward to providing further updates on our process development phase over the coming months."
There is also the 4 diamond drills paid for by the Australian government and the 40RC drill program results to look forward to.
Good question and I would love to know the planned capex and capacity of a demonstration plant. Would 100kt output be considered demonstration scale I wonder?
Sovereign minerals stage 1 aims to be 145k/year output for comparison
The demonstration plant will be larger than a pilot plant. I can see this climbing and climbing as the size of the ore body (the two southern high grade targets being drilled right now) are billions of tonnes each -
Let's say 4Billion tonnes total (very conservative) 5% (maybe over 6-7%) TiO2
Therefor then total TiO2 content is 200MillionT.
Each tonne of 95% TiO2 is worth$2000 (99%=$5k)
GGP mineral resource is 131MillionT total
Total gold content is around 8.4millionOz
Each oz is worth $2100
GGP $17b (30% owned so actually $5b)
EEE $400b (70% owned so actually $280b)
Explorers typically worth 2% of in-situ
EEE = $6b (actual market cap today = $70m)
GGP = $100m (actual market cap today $400m)
Look at the rock chip samples tested in November:
Table 1, TiO2 grades between 13 & 21%
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/EEE/extensive-ti-mineralisation-across-giant-system/16206088
I notice in this technical report of the metalurgy results compiled to go along with yesterday's results:
https://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/6096F_1-2024-3-5.pdf
The drill samples they used to test were released in july 2023
The drill is called RC23MTS001, 002 & 003
Here is the RNS with those drill results.
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/EEE/high-grade-tio2-over-entire-40km-system-pitfield/16023359
Notice that the grades of TiO2 here are 4.4%, 4.7%, 4.7%
Fast forward to January 2024
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/EEE/extensive-shallow-high-grade-bedded-ti-confirmed-hgm6nvyfhhjlqta.html
o RC23TOM002 intersected 168m @ 6.91% TiO2 from 12m;
o RC23TOM003 intersected 180m @ 6.14% TiO2 from 0m;
o RC23COS004 intersected 154m @ 5.50% TiO2 from 0m; and
o RC23COS005 intersected 148m @ 6.18% TiO2 from 6m.
· It is clear from the results of this RC drilling that the higher-grade mineralisation is found within the more highly altered sandstone beds. The conglomerates and the siltstones are still mineralised, but not to the same extent as the sandstones. This provides a targeting tool for further exploration where previous mapping and rock chip sampling identified high-grade TiO2 mineralisation within sandstones that can be prioritised for the next round of drilling
*******
The metalurgy results came back amazing for 4.2-4.7% zone
They are getting higher grades every drill campaign,
5.5 to 6.9% released in January
Current drill campaign due to compete end of April should return more of the highest grades if not even higher than anything seen previously. And that will be the JORC and mine target. Could we see over 7%?
I wish they would sink a big deep drill down the middle and get the 5km deep high grade result. That would make the headlines
"The scale of the potential titanium deposit looks unlike anything we have seen before with a strike extent of 30 km and a 5km deep keel identified by coincident magnetics and gravimetric geophysical surveys."
I remember when Lovehandles said this on the 11th December
"Sure Andii, "in-theory" they can try and target "target pure TiO2 that sells for $2000/t", which would require EEE to be building a smelter or similar as part of their project - not much change out of $1bn to build one of those...and that's on top of the cost of building a mine."
LH also said that the final product would only be worth $300/t but yesterday we have a route to $5000/t on site confirmed.
Check the RNS again and see the map, HV sub station nearby, water, gas and rail all on the property = massive capex savings.
Gravity separation removes most of the titanite (with 90% recovery) and a simple low acid leaching process concentrates the titanium into 95% product. Not much acid will be required as they already concentrated the material.
I wonder if over time they could gravity separate at the mine face and slurry pump with electric pumps to the processing plant. That would keep costs down.
Of course the project is such high grade, they won't be doing much mining as there is so much titanium in every square meter. Lol
The conceptual processing flowsheet that is being tested consists of beneficiation stages to generate a titanium-rich heavy mineral concentrate and to remove acid-consuming gangue minerals, followed by a simple acid leaching stage, and will therefore not require an energy intensive, on-site smelting process.
Potential On-site High Value TiO2 Products
The final product from the leaching stage is expected to be a fine precipitated powder with a high TiO? concentration, approaching the same content as natural rutile (>95%). However, the material will likely require calcination and pelletisation to make it an attractive, handleable product for customers. Based on Q4 2023 rutile market supply and demand forecasts the price range for rutile is in the order of US$1,880/t to US$2,180/t, reflecting a tightening of the supply chain despite increasing demand over the next decade (Source: Sovereign Metals Ltd. February 2024 Investor Presentation - Prices per TZMI; Ilmenite price: November 2023 FOB Mozambique; Rutile price: "weighted average price for bagged rutile shipments").
The Company could additionally consider a further on-site refinement step for the TiO2 product and make a pigment-quality product for marketing directly to end users, in the manufacture of paints and coatings, plastics and paper. Based on Q4 2022 prices the expected price range for TiO2 pigments is in the order of US$4,340/t to US$5,180/t.
The process is described in the RNS
The quantity of titanite within the tested samples averaged approximately 20% of the rock mass; this level of titanite concentration is extraordinary as titanite is usually an accessory mineral and rarely gets above 1-2% of the rock mass.
Explorative metallurgical investigations have focused mainly on wet gravity separation to beneficiate crushed and ground ore samples before further processing, with around 90% of the heavy minerals such as ilmenite, Ti-oxides and Fe-oxides recovered to the concentrate streams with 84% recovery of the titanite
From Empire's preliminary processing studies, it is anticipated that Pitfield ore will be amenable to conventional leaching under atmospheric conditions to liberate the titanium, not unlike how certain copper ores are recovered by an acid leach-solvent extraction process to liberate copper on site. There is a considerable amount of metallurgical research work that demonstrates the successful leaching of titanite, using low temperature sulphuric acid or hydrochloric acid to dissolve the titanite and liberate the Ti into a liquid phase.
One of the key differences between the processing options being considered for the Pitfield titanite ore and those commonly found in the ilmenite industry is that a low temperature acid leach process is likely all that is needed to extract the titanium and produce a high-quality product. No energy-intensive smelting is required and a higher value product can be produced on-site.
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