Case study 08 / Mining, bauxite residue
An operator was paying to store its bauxite waste. Honeycomb costed it into a financeable plant.
A mining operator's red-mud residue sat on the books as a disposal cost. Honeycomb built the market and processing case, staged the path from pilot to demonstration plant, and removed an unverified claim before anything went to investors.
What Honeycomb did
Built the commercial case
Honeycomb mapped the end markets and processing route that gave the residue commercial value, then put real capital figures against each stage.
Staged the capital to proof
A US$2-3M test programme came first, with a 10,000 tpa demonstration plant only after it worked.
Removed an unverified claim
An earlier draft relied on an unverified relationship with a major aluminium group. Honeycomb rebuilt the analysis without that dependency.
The shift
Costed as a commercial processing opportunity
Before: Residue treated as a remediation cost
A pilot, then a 10,000 tpa demonstration plant
Before: A single-step build assumed
Costed: US$2-3M pilot, US$18-20M plant
Before: Opportunity described in words
Outcome
The operator could take its waste stream to a financier as a costed plant, with nothing in the analysis it could not stand behind.
An anonymised example of work done with Honeycomb. Figures describe this case and are not a general performance guarantee.
Discuss your own case