Feasibility, financing, and partnership build for a North African resources project

A minerals and resources development project in North Africa — a multi-stakeholder programme involving sovereign-linked entities, private operators, and international technical partners — had reached the stage where momentum required a single rigorous feasibility, a workable financing structure, and a contractually solid partnership stack across companies. The technical case was credible. The commercial, partnership, and financing cases were not yet investor-grade. The project sponsor needed senior leadership to bring the three together inside a defined window.

Xelyr led the feasibility and business plan development. Scope covered: the technical-commercial feasibility case; the financial forecast and sensitivity envelope; the identification of funding requirements and the design of a financing scheme acceptable to the contemplated capital providers; the implementation plan and project organisation; and the negotiation and structuring of the cross-company partnerships required for execution. Authority covered the partnership-build mandate end-to-end and the development of the document set required for capital raise.

The feasibility was built bottom-up — resource validation, processing and offtake assumptions, capex and opex models, and a sensitivity analysis stress-testing the project against commodity price, currency, and execution-risk scenarios. Financing design covered three layers — sovereign-linked development finance, commercial debt against the offtake contract, and a sponsor equity structure — with a clear sequence of investor approaches, term sheets, and decision gates. Partnership-building paired the project sponsor with three named technical and commercial partners across the value chain, structured around mutual-benefit terms that survived first-pass legal review. Implementation planning produced a three-phase build with explicit gate criteria for transition between feasibility, financial close, and execution.

Feasibility document accepted by all material partners. Two of three target financing tranches advanced into formal term-sheet negotiation. Project organisation stood up with named project director and core team. Programme transitioned into the financial-close phase on schedule.