I like your thought process. This is a bit different mainly b/c the end product is going to be (in essence) an owner occupied 'site' that needs to have things extracted and sold. Commercial construction projects are done with the 'progress' financing through a general contractor (usually) and with the idea that the end product will be a real building that is either owner-occupied or an 'income' property.

Owner occupied properties are easy to look at b/c your repayment is based on the company that occupies...just look at their financials and the strength of the principals. Income properties are subject to more risk b/c of fluctuations in the market rental rates and the available uses of the property, competition, etc.

This situation is truly a hybrid of sorts. They own the land and the resources that lie in it, but the company's ability to repay a loan will depend not only on their own ability to operate, but the price of gold, antimony and various licensing/permitting(legal) as well. Additionally, progress financing utilizes third party 'monitoring' companies that determine if certain guidelines are met in the construction process...I'm not sure if they can do this with mining, but I'm not real familiar with the process of going into production.

I guess what I'm getting at is that some financial institution will have to be convinced that there is some source of repayment via sale of the recovered assets before they would consider anything. In addition to being convinced, they will have to agree that the market for the resource being sold is strong / headed in the right direction. Given SLGLF's financial performance in the past, it will be closer to 'venture capital' mentality than banking, but there are still institutions out there making reasonable loans.