The Chalice Mining Ltd (ASX: CHN) share price is having a day to forget on Wednesday.
At the time of writing, the mineral exploration company's shares are down 23% to $3.87.
This is an improvement on earlier in the day when its shares were down as much as 28% to $3.63.
Why is the Chalice Mining share price being sold down?
Investors have been hitting the sell button today in response to the release of an update on the Gonneville Nickel-Copper-PGE Project scoping study.
According to the release, the scoping study outlines a new long-life, low-cost, low-carbon green metals mine in Western Australia with the potential to deliver strong financial returns and regional benefits, plus significant upside.
It also outlines an executable, tier-1 scale development project in a world-class jurisdiction.
Chalice Managing Director & CEO, Alex Dorsch, commented:
The Scoping Study highlights an outstanding opportunity to develop a modern, long-life, Western Australian critical metals mine which, because of its scale, longevity and the mix of valuable green metals it is scoped to produce, represents a unique opportunity in the sector.
Gonneville has the potential to deliver a large suite of metals which are essential to global decarbonisation and urbanisation. Without the development of new strategic projects such as this, the world is forecast to fall short of net-zero ambitions which rely on the rapid deployment of clean energy and electrification technologies.
This all sounds great, right? So why is the Chalice Mining share price crashing today?
What's going on?
The reason for the share price weakness appears to be the timeline that has been outlined by management.
Despite the progress it has made so far with its drilling, the company doesn't expect to complete its pre-feasibility study until mid-2025.
After which, if everything goes to plan, first production is expected to commence in 2029. Yes, that's not a typo. First production is coming towards the end of the decade.
It seems that some investors are not willing to stick around for the journey and have been offloading their shares today.
