Rosh Pinah sits 850 kilometres south of Windhoek in the //Karas Region, close enough to the Orange River that water isn’t the constraint. The constraint, historically, has been ownership instability — three corporate owners in a decade, one insolvency proceeding, and a capital expansion plan whose timeline has been quietly revised so many times that the original 2021 feasibility numbers now serve mainly as historical curiosity. What follows is an attempt to read the cap table as it actually stands, price the deal at three zinc scenarios, and say plainly where the IRR math does not close.
How the Cap Table Got Here: From Trevali to Receivership to Appian
Trevali Mining Corporation acquired Rosh Pinah in 2017 as part of its purchase of Glencore’s zinc asset package — a transaction that also delivered the Perkoa mine in Burkina Faso. The strategic logic was straightforward: Glencore retained an offtake agreement and minority economics while Trevali assumed operational risk. For Glencore, this is a house style. For Trevali, it meant carrying the capex burden of the RP2.0 expansion — a planned doubling of throughput to roughly 1.5 million tonnes per annum — while servicing acquisition debt at a point in the zinc cycle that turned hostile faster than management’s models assumed.
The proximate cause of Trevali’s collapse was not Rosh Pinah. It was Perkoa. In April 2022, a flood at the Burkina Faso underground operation killed eight workers and destroyed the mine’s near-term production profile. Trevali filed for creditor protection under Canada’s CCAA in August 2022, with Ernst & Young appointed as monitor. Rosh Pinah, operationally sound and generating cash at the time, was dragged into proceedings as a group asset.
The receiver process ran through late 2022 and into 2023. Appian Capital Advisory — the London-based private equity manager whose portfolio runs to mid-tier mining assets across West Africa and Latin America — emerged as the acquirer. The precise acquisition price has not been disclosed in public filings as of mid-2025, which is the first number any serious buyer needs to reconstruct before trusting anyone else’s IRR. What is publicly known: Appian acquired the asset out of distressed proceedings, which implies a discount to replacement cost, though “discount to replacement cost” covers a wide range when the asset in question had an incomplete expansion and a pending environmental compliance certificate.
Vendetta Mining, a TSX-V listed junior, had previously held an earn-in position on an adjacent deposit. Their SEDAR+ filings are worth reading for the geological context, though the earn-in economics are junior-market arithmetic and not material to the operating asset’s returns.
Glencore’s Offtake: The Structural Lien Nobody Headlines
The part of the Rosh Pinah capital structure that receives less attention than it deserves is the Glencore offtake. Glencore’s 2022 annual report discloses the broad shape of its zinc marketing relationships, though specific Rosh Pinah terms are not itemised. The terms originated with the 2017 asset sale and, based on standard industry practice for Glencore-originated transactions, are likely structured as a long-dated offtake at treatment and refining charges (TC/RC) benchmarked to annual industry settlements.
This matters for IRR modelling because TC/RC terms eat into the zinc price the mine actually realises. In a year where zinc smelters negotiate hard — as they did through 2023 and 2024 when zinc concentrate was in surplus — the gap between LME spot and mine-gate realisation widens. A mine modelling $1.25/lb zinc on LME spot may realise $1.08–$1.12/lb net of payables and charges depending on concentrate grade and terms. The RP2.0 ore body grades roughly 8–9% zinc, which is respectable and keeps payable metal ratios healthy, but the point stands: the offtake structure is a structural lien on upside.
Whether Appian renegotiated offtake terms as part of the acquisition is not publicly confirmed. If they did not, Glencore continues to capture a meaningful slice of any zinc price recovery through marketing margin. If they did, Appian paid for that renegotiation either in price or in other concessions. Neither scenario is visible in public documents as of the time of writing.
The RP2.0 Expansion: What Was Announced, What Was FID’d, What Is Currently Running
The RP2.0 project was first announced by Trevali with a feasibility study in 2021. The headline numbers at the time: throughput expansion from approximately 850,000 tpa to 1.5 million tpa, capital cost in the range of USD 120–140 million, with first expanded production targeted for 2024. Mining Weekly’s coverage of the project through 2021–2022 documented the timeline in some detail.
None of that timeline survived the CCAA filing intact.
As of mid-2025, the most recent public disclosure from Appian indicates that Rosh Pinah has returned to operation at existing throughput rates — call it the base case, not the expansion case. The RP2.0 capital programme appears to be staged rather than committed in full. The Namibia Ministry of Mines and Energy issued environmental compliance certification for the extended footprint, which is a necessary but not sufficient condition for expansion capital deployment.
Stating the obvious: a mine running at 850,000 tpa has roughly half the unit cost absorption of a mine running at 1.5 million tpa. Fixed costs — headcount, maintenance, power, debt service — spread over a smaller denominator. This is the single biggest variable in whether the current operating plan generates acceptable returns at mid-cycle zinc.
IRR Sensitivity: Showing the Working at Three Zinc Prices
By the numbers — Rosh Pinah base-case operating assumptions (estimated, pre-expansion):
| Assumption | Value |
|---|---|
| Throughput (base case) | ~850,000 tpa |
| Head grade (zinc) | ~8.5% Zn |
| C1 cash cost estimate | ~USD 0.85–0.95/lb (Wood Mackenzie zinc cost curve, Q1 2025) |
| Sustaining capex (annual) | ~USD 15–20 million (estimated) |
Wood Mackenzie’s zinc cost curve data places Rosh Pinah in the second quartile of global zinc producers on C1 costs — not a low-cost outlier, but not a marginal mine either. The expansion, if completed, would likely push it toward the lower end of the second quartile through fixed-cost dilution.
Now the IRR table. These are illustrative calculations based on publicly available or reasonably estimated parameters. Appian has not published a project-level IRR, and the acquisition price — the most sensitive input — is undisclosed. I am using a proxy acquisition price range of USD 60–90 million, which reflects distressed-asset pricing against replacement cost of a mine with USD 120–140 million in incomplete expansion capex. If Appian paid materially more, the numbers below get worse. If they paid materially less, they get better. The reader should weight accordingly.
Zinc at USD 1.10/lb (below current spot, approximately the 2023 average low): Net realisation after TC/RC, payables, and royalties: approximately USD 0.90–0.95/lb. At 850,000 tpa throughput and ~8.5% head grade, payable zinc production is roughly 55,000–60,000 tonnes per year. Revenue: USD 109–126 million. Subtract C1 costs of USD 0.90/lb on ~60,000t (USD 118 million) and sustaining capex of USD 17 million: free cash flow is negative to marginally positive. This deal does not work at $1.10/lb without the expansion. The IRR at acquisition cost is sub-7% and likely negative in real terms.
Zinc at USD 1.25/lb (current approximate spot as of mid-2025, LME reference): Net realisation: approximately USD 1.03–1.07/lb. Revenue on 60,000t payable: approximately USD 136–142 million. Free cash flow before debt service and expansion capex: USD 10–18 million annually. Against an acquisition cost of USD 60–90 million with a five-year hold assumption, this produces an IRR in the 12–18% range — acceptable for private equity in a mining asset, but not exciting, and entirely contingent on zinc staying above $1.20 through the hold period and on the expansion reaching FID within 24 months to change the cost structure. If neither happens, the IRR drifts toward 10% and the carry cost of incomplete capex becomes a drag.
Zinc at USD 1.40/lb (consensus bull case, upper end of most 2025–2027 forecast ranges): Net realisation: approximately USD 1.17–1.21/lb. Revenue: approximately USD 155–163 million. Free cash flow: USD 25–35 million annually at base throughput. IRR on acquisition: 22–28%. This is where the deal looks genuinely good, and it is also where the deal requires you to believe in a sustained zinc price that has not been sustained for any multi-year period since 2006–2007. The energy transition narrative around zinc (galvanising for wind towers, battery chemistries) is real but has not yet translated into a structural floor above $1.30.
What the IRR Math Requires You to Believe
For the Rosh Pinah restart to deliver private equity-grade returns at $1.25/lb zinc, four things need to be simultaneously true: the expansion reaches FID within the next 18–24 months and is delivered without significant cost overrun; Glencore offtake terms do not structurally cap realised price below $1.10; the //Karas Region operating environment (power from NamPower, cross-border concentrate logistics via South Africa) remains stable; and the Namibian regulatory timeline for any further permitting — NEEEF compliance, expanded environmental authorisations — does not add 12 months of carrying cost to a project already running behind its original schedule.
None of these conditions is wildly implausible. None is guaranteed. The acquisition was made at a price that appears to have been structured for exactly this level of uncertainty — distressed enough to provide downside cushion, not so cheap that the seller left nothing on the table.
The honest read: at $1.25/lb with the expansion completed on schedule, this is a mid-teens IRR deal. At $1.10/lb without expansion, it is a slow bleed. At $1.40/lb it looks smart in retrospect. The next twelve months of zinc price direction and RP2.0 FID news are the two variables worth tracking. Everything else is noise.