Sandfire Resources LtdS

Lifecycle Milestones

1. Permit granted

   Jul 2021 · The Government of Botswana granted Sandfire the mining licence for Motheo on 7 Jul 2021 -- the final major permitting milestone required to enable full-scale construction (the Botswana government separately holds a right, not yet exercised as of this pass, to acquire up to a 15% interest in the T3-Motheo Project). Full-date precision, primary-announcement sourced (globalminingreview.com / kitco.com, both reporting the same 7 Jul 2021 announcement). · Source
2. Construction decision (FID)

   Dec 2020 · Sandfire's board took the final investment decision on the ~US$259-279M Motheo development in Dec 2020 (see technicalReportNote for the unreconciled two-figure capex range). Month precision only (exact day not independently confirmed this pass). · Source
3. Construction start

   Reached — date not disclosed · Initial site works at Motheo (sterilisation drilling, a 15km access road, a 200-person camp) were already 'well advanced' by the time the Jul 2021 mining licence was granted (per the same licence-announcement coverage), meaning genuine construction activity began in H1 2021, ahead of the licence that enabled full-scale construction -- a real, not erroneous, ordering (early site-preparation work under a lesser permit before the main mining licence is a normal project-development sequence). Dated to 1 Jan 2021 as a year-precision placeholder (no more precise start date found this pass); do not read the day/month as confirmed. [Task #697 chronology ruling, 2026-08-25] achievedDate cleared (was 2021-01-01). Task #696's permit rule flagged this row as predating the 7 Jul 2021 Motheo mining licence. The row's own note had already anticipated the objection from both directions -- it recorded the value as "a year-precision placeholder (no more precise start date found this pass); do not read the day/month as confirmed", and separately established that initial site works (sterilisation drilling, a 15km access road, a 200-person camp) were genuinely "well advanced" before the licence was granted, which is a normal sequence rather than an error. So there are two claims here and only one of them is sound: the ORDERING is real and stays in the note, but the DATE was an explicit placeholder that no source supports, and a placeholder should not be the thing a consistency rule adjudicates. Cleared per the house convention for imprecise dates; the H1 2021 finding and its citation are preserved above. This leaves the ticker's remaining PERMIT_GRANTED_AFTER_CONSTRUCTION_DECISION pair, already covered by the permit rule's conditional-FID expectedGap. Note that this row is the precedent HGO's CONSTRUCTION_START note cites (Task #622) for early works preceding formal sign-off -- that precedent is unaffected, since it rests on the sequence, not on the placeholder date. · Source
4. First pour / production

   May 2023 · Sandfire announced first copper concentrate produced at Motheo on 25 May 2023. Full-date precision, primary-company-announcement sourced (Sandfire's own ASX release, republished via im-mining.com). · Source
5. Commercial production

   Jul 2023 · Commercial production at Motheo was declared from Jul 2023, following completion of the mine at the end of Jun 2023 (the mine was subsequently officially opened in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on 10 Aug 2023). Month precision only. · Source

Milestones are recorded only from a company's own dated disclosure. A milestone with no date shown is one we can confirm was reached but for which no date was disclosed — we don't estimate one. "Not yet reached" means exactly that, not that a date is missing. An "Expected" line likewise only ever reflects the company's own guidance (e.g. a study or permit decision targeted for a stated quarter) — most not-yet-reached milestones have none, and that absence means no such guidance has been disclosed, not that one is overdue.

A relative ranking of how closely this company matches the profile of juniors that have actually been acquired — not a probability, and not a reason to buy. Acquisitions are rare: only a few dozen significant deals happen a year across a universe of thousands of juniors, so even a high score here describes a long shot. The strongest signal the underlying research identifies — whether a major already holds a JV, earn-in, or 5–19.9% strategic stake — isn't tracked yet and is absent from this score.