RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:WOW...Yeah I've spoken to Dan at VRIC twice, because he's usually the only HDI person that hangs out at the booth. It was those conversations that prompted me to look into NCF more closely, but each time I come away uneasy.
The tungsten market is one Chinese policy decision away from being ruined. And I don't see any obvious suitors for NCF (based on fairly superficial research). So if it's not being taken out it's only hope is a JV, because there's little hope NCF gets debt-financing when it needs to raise 10 times its market cap for the equity portion (35-40% of capex) of any financing package. Maybe Todd comes to the rescue? Not sure how deep their pockets are but they are also invested in Wolf so either they're super bullish on Tungsten or they're hedging their bets to see who can get financed and take their project to production.
Even RTH would have trouble coming up with $45 - $60 million for a $150 million capex if it had to take Olza to production alone. Fortunately, all signs point to take out after permitting. Why bother with a PEA and BFS when the party that will buy the project (Arcelormittal) already knows the economics of the mine due to their nearby Pomorzany mine that shares the exact same geology? Oh right and they just bought that zinc smelter and concentrator too and they're going to run out of feed in 1-2 years (and forced to import it from Western Europe or beyond). So this is a permitting game right now - Olza is after all right on the outskirts of the town of Zawiercie, which is the largest risk factor to the project. But double digit unemployment in the Lesser Poland region doesn't hurt the project's prospects.
Pebble is a shame. The EPA definitely has an axe to grind. No clue if it's a legitimate axe (I'm not invested so I don't care to do more than read the various NRs of each side accusing the other of bad faith), but clearly an axe to grind. It just goes to show that even in one of the world's friendliest mining jurisdictions, anything can happen.