PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Carpentaria Exploration has delivered an attractive development case of its Hawsons iron-ore project, in New South Wales, with the release of the results of a prefeasibility study (PFS), MD Quentin Hill said on Friday.
The PFS estimated that the 10-million-tonne-a-year operation would have a post-tax net present value of $867-million and an internal rate of return of 17.8%.
Revenues of $881-million a year and average earnings before interest, taxes, deprecation and amortisation of $401-million a year were reported in the PFS.
Hill commented that the results established the project’s position as a leading undeveloped high-quality concentrate and pellet feed project.
“This is a major step forward for what could become a decades-long operation for Broken Hill. Blue-chip steel makers from Asia and the Middle East have already oversubscribed for our initial planned production, and Hawsons is now extremely well positioned to attract the necessary investment to advance towards mining.”
He noted that the successful PFS delivered an attractive development case for Hawsons under long-term iron-ore price forecasts, and a cost structure in the first quartile of the global iron-ore cost curve that meant cash flow was likely sustainable through the commodity cycle.
“These results substantially lift the investment grade and the strategic value of the project."
The company will now present the results of the PFS to its seven blue-chip customers that have already signed letters of intent (LoI) to purchase the Hawsons product, as well as other steel makers and financial institutions that have shown interest in the project. The current LoI customers will have a combined offtake of some 12-million tonnes a year of Hawsons product, accounting for 120% of the PFS’s targeted production.