How to Run High-Level Economics on a Greenfield Site
Before anyone spends real money on drilling, permits, or lawyers, a greenfield site deserves a one-afternoon economic screen: rough numbers, honest ranges, and a clear kill/advance answer. Here's the framework that separates a prospect from a money pit — the same order a buyer's engineer will run it.
01Size the prize: tons and years
Estimate mineable resource from geology, mapping, or nearby data: area × thickness × density, cut by realistic recovery (setbacks, slopes, floors — expect to lose 20–40% of the gross). Divide by a sane annual production for the market. Under ~20 years of life for a quarry, or under the payback-plus-margin for a metal, the screen usually ends here.
02Anchor the revenue line
Price is local truth, not a wish: freight-adjusted competitor pricing for aggregates, consensus long-term prices (not spot) for metals. Build product mix realistically — a quarry doesn't sell 100% premium stone; 15–30% of output is usually low-value fines and base. Revenue per ton mined, not per ton of the best product.
03Rough the operating cost
Use analogs, then sanity-check bottom-up on the big four: drill & blast, load & haul (distance and lift drive it), processing, and G&A. For Southeast US crushed stone, all-in cash costs commonly land in the $7–12/ton neighborhood depending on haul and hardness; metals vary too much to shortcut — use a nearby operating analog or don't pretend.
04Rough the capital
Greenfield capex = plant + mobile fleet + development/stripping + land + permitting + infrastructure (power, water, scale house, access) + 25–35% contingency because it's a screen, not an estimate. A useful cross-check: capex per annual ton of capacity against recent comparable builds. If your number looks like half of everyone else's, you forgot something — usually the road, the power line, or the wetlands.
05Run the ugly-simple DCF
Annual cash flow = tons × (price − opex) − sustaining capital. Discount 8–12% for aggregates, higher for metals and geography risk. Compute NPV, IRR, and payback. At screen level, precision is fake — what matters is whether IRR clears your hurdle with room to be 20% wrong on three inputs at once.
06Stress the three killers
Rerun with: price −15%, opex +20%, capex +30%, and two years of permitting delay. If the project survives all four individually, it earns a site visit and a drill budget. If any single one kills it, that variable is the project — go resolve it before spending on anything else.
07Write the kill memo either way
One page: resource, assumptions, NPV/IRR range, the sensitivity that matters, and the decision. Dead prospects documented well save the next person a month; live prospects documented well become the seed of the feasibility study.
This is exactly the analysis ShotRock runs — with real comps, real models, and a signature behind it — when the screen graduates to a decision.
Need this done right on a real project?
ShotRock provides independent due diligence, reserve estimation, mine engineering, and economics — senior-level only, worldwide.
Figures are approximate, compiled from public sources as of mid-2026, and rounded for readability. Rankings shift with markets, mergers, and new discoveries. Nothing here is investment, legal, or engineering advice for a specific site — for that, hire an engineer. We know one.