Each year, the proposed mill will process 1.61 million tonnes of ore to produce an annual average of 224,686 tonnes of technical and chemical grade spodumene concentrates and 441 tonnes of tantalite concentrate, according to the study, which assumes that a simple open pit mining and conventional lithium processing technologies is used.
Over the life of mine, the pit will excavate a total of 182.4 million tonnes of waste rock and 10.9 million tonnes of overburden. The average strip ratio is 7.3 tonnes of waste per tonne of ore.
The report pegs the Rose project at an after-tax net present value of over $1.91 billion (at 8% discount rate) with an internal rate of return of 82.4%. The initial capital cost is estimated at $357 million. Variable costs include average operating costs of $74.48/t milled and $540/t concentrate (all concentrate production combined).
To reflect current market conditions, the feasibility used conservative…
