High Purity Alumina (HPA) developer, FYI Resources Ltd has started a BFS for its wholly-owned Cadoux kaolin project (E70/4673) in Western Australia. This follows the excellent economic outcomes achieved in the Cadoux PFS, released to the ASX on 25 September 2018. The PFS outlines a HPA production scenario of 8,000 t/y via a conventional HCl leach and precipitation refining process to produce an ultra-high grade (>99.99%), high-value alumina product for export into a rapidly growing market.
Economic outcomes from the PFS were outstanding, including an after-tax NPV10 value of $506 million, an IRR of 46% (after tax), annual EBITDA of $128 million and a project payback of ~3.6 years.
FYI has retained leading Australian engineering consulting and contracting company, GR Engineering Services Ltd (GRES) to undertake key components of the BFS related to plant design; capital cost and operating cost estimation; and process and non-process infrastructure evaluation.
GRES has completed dozens of design and construction projects and conducted over 160 project feasibility studies across multiple commodities for many clients globally. The company’s skills and experience in the area of HCl precipitation and leaching is particularly attractive to FYI in completing a successful, high quality BFS.
FYI Managing Director, Roland Hill commented: “The Cadoux kaolin project PFS demonstrated outstanding project metrics and absolutely warrants the highest standard of engineering. We believe as a result of the team that we have assembled we are well placed to commence construction in line with our project development schedule next year. GR Engineering delivered a fantastic result with our PFS and based on the success of that outcome we are more than pleased to have the continuity with them through the completion of the BFS.
“Importantly, the Company remains fully funded to complete the BFS with its existing cash reserves. The Company will continue to advance discussions with key industry players for potential offtake and financing towards the completion of the BFS.”
With the funding in place, and with a number of key permitting milestones already achieved at Cadoux, the BFS is scheduled to be completed by mid-2019 and construction planned to commence in the December quarter 2019. In the meantime, FYI is progressing in parallel with a number of key value-adding development milestones, including:
• Project risk mitigation studies
• Continuation of permitting approvals
• Site selection process at Kwinana for refinery location
• Ongoing discussions with project financing parties and strategic funding parties
• Advancing customers and offtake parties discussions.
The foundation of FYI’s HPA strategy is the superior quality aluminous clay (kaolin) deposit at Cadoux and exceptional positive response that the feedstock has to the company’s moderate temperature, atmospheric pressure HCl flowsheet. The strategy’s superior quality attributes combine resulting in world class HPA project potential.
Cadoux kaolin project Reserves are 2.9 Mt @ 24.4% Al2O3.
