transport costs 4 dollars a tonne hour is a good rule of thumb for transport costs. ft nelson is not that far away for a railhead, nor is hay river. Worst case would be 12 hours or 48 dollars a tonne. Once it is on the rail 30 dollars a tonne should get you anywhere on the westcoast or down to trail where Teck has a smelter.
48 plus 30 dollars a tonne is 78 bucks for concentrate. Now lets just be crazy for a second and break down the rock value of the ore. 10% lead and zinc which are trading around 2000/tonne is 400/tonne, plus the silver at 7 oz/ton is 190 dollars, and 30 dollars worth of copper.
Quick math the value of the ORE is $620/ tonne (after a 15 month sell off in metals none the less. So even if we shipped ore we could still make pretty good money.
Concentrate should increase the value at least three times so our concentrate would be worth at least 1800/tonne. For that kind of money you can ship it anywhere- think of the chilean grapes and cherries you buy for 1/pound retail in the store. They came many times the distance and are time sensitive, require refrigeration, have been hand picked, washed, boxed, and marked up by your friends at loblaws.
Zinc concentrate is a semi-processed intermediate product used in the production of zinc metal and zinc alloys, which is the result of a flotation process after the zinc ore has been mined and milled. The zinc ore contains 1-15% zinc whereas the concentrate typically contains approximately 55% zinc, 6.5% iron and 32% sulfur together with other elements at much lower levels.