An introduction to Mineral Processing

Mineral processing has all kinds of implications for efficiencies, CAPEX and operating costs, and the end product.

This is a real favourite of mine as it's where the industry sees the most 'con'. These studies are presented to the market with a rather large amount of 'slippage', or lack of correlation with the real world. In other words, the payability of your concentrates.

It's looking at how do you get from your ore to your concentrate? And what's the payability of that, and what are the recoveries?

Quite often on a simplistic basis, when one is looking at this early stage where companies have not got into production yet, it's very simple to look at the in situ value of the metal or to take a simplistic look at the valuation that is spat out in the NPV by the consultant or the company.

Actually, when you factor in the loss of revenue from recovery and the real payable content of the metals, it can have a significantly different impact or significantly different outcome on the value of the project.

That is something we'll look into, highlighting a few case studies and the generic analysis of why a Gold project is easier to build than a Copper project, which is easier to build than a Nickel project, which is easier to build than a Platinum project, which is easier to build than a Rare Earth project.

We'll cover those differences and hopefully help you understand that when a junior company says it's going to be a Rare Earths producer, you've got to go: ‘Okay…Let's think about that.’