Concerns over preliminary estimates for operating and capital expenditure have prompted rare earths developer Arafura Resources to defer the DFS for its 100%-owned neodymium-praseodymium project 135km NW of Alice Springs in Australia’s NT.
Arafura says external data sources indicates costs will be materially higher than its own internal targets and previous announcements.
More investigations on reagent pricing, pilot processing results and analysis of the trade-offs between capital and operating expenditures will put back the DFS completion from this month to early Feb.