Alright, I have been working on more DD material after reading Hardrock's great posts and links. I have some interesting stuff regarding Chromite so here goes:
As has been discussed before, there is no spot price for Chromite. The price is negotiated in 3 month contracts. In the last 3 month's contracts, the price was in the range of $600-650 per ton for 40-42% Cr3O2 for the large crystal, lumpy ore like we have. In the next contract this price has increased to $800 per ton and reflects the hunger by China for this material. India has slapped tarifs on anyone exporting this mineral as their steel industry is rising and they wish to keep this important ore home. The world consumes about 7.5 million tons of this ore of which the US accounts for .5M and China around 1.5M.
Now if we were to spend 150M for a mill and mill this ore, we would be removing 1/3 of the material as waste. The higher concentrated ore would then fetch about $1000 per ton. The processing cost for this would run about $5 per ton but would be recouped easily by saving on the cheaper shipping costs due to less waste material being shipped.
I also did some digging and found out that our bulk sampling permit in Windfall enables us to get 25k tons of ore out in total so this is very significant. At 10k tons (my first guess), we were looking at 16M of cash minus processing fees. This was based on 2oz per ton and $800 per ounce. Now at 25k tons, we would have 40M dollars worth minus 1.75M in fees at $70 per ton. So this would yield 38.25M dollars for our coffers. That is quite a significant amount and more than justifies the 12M spent on the ramp. The biggest risk in this equation is the 2 oz per ton and we will have to see how this number stands up to the test when they finish the sampling.
All of course IMHO, do your own DD,
Glorieux